Okay. My hard drive went bad on my very old laptop (old Toshiba)
and I just wanted to know if there is a way to install Puppy Linux on it. I already tried and it fails to find a "superblock" and then wont work. I don't know what a superblock is by the way.

Well if the HDD is bad...then obviously you can't install anything to it. You would need to replace the HDD, or if you really didn't want to spend any money on it, run the OS live from CD or USB (whatever the hardware supports).

You can run Puppy "live" off USB too. It can save changes "persistance" to the USB, so when you reboot everything is there.
Check out Slitaz too-that's what I'm installing to my Toshiba 7000CT now. It can run live and save changes too.
http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/

Yes you can there are numerous ways of doing it.
You can install to usb
you can install to a multisession cdrw
you can install to a multisession dvdrw
you can save to a memory card
you can run it live, and try to format your hard drive with gparted.
if you can copy just the cd files to the hard drive you can use a wake pup floppy disk which is like a portable bootloader.
If you need more help, post it in the official puppy forum, where you can find hundreds of programs and people to help you, the web link is

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/

Ps your hard drive isn't broken it needs a proper format.

Judging from your chosen words, I assume you are a real novice user - so I'll advise based on that assumption.

The easiest way, in this situation, for you to "test" that hard drive, would be to try some various distros other than Puppy. I've learned that Puppy isn't exactly all "point and click". Try Ubuntu, try Fedora, try CentOS or RedHat, try to install Windows XP, even and see how it fairs. You will be suprised what XP will actually run on, though not necessarily be very usable! It WOULD make a fine rudimentary "test" in your case.

The previous commenter may be right that the drive is not actually bad. Installing other OSes is a goo dway to quick-check that.

In order to skip the complications of the "millions of things to know" that would stop a newbie from digging in... I'd say try those methods to get Linux installed. If another distro installs ok, either stay with that distro, or retry Puppy with the Puppy-forums close at hand. Either way, get Linux installed and start exploring. That is the MOST IMPORTANT thing... just get your hands dirty with Linux.

I have found that Ubuntu is the easiest to work with, but you DO lose a lot of the classic "Linux-ness" of Linux. Don't let that discourage you.

Puppy is a great tiny-footprint distro for older machines, but it sacrifices any semblance of ease-of-install in-so-being.

I also highly recommend getting a hold of some CompTIA A+ training materials. They will teach you a LOT about hardware, including how hard-drives function and you will learn a lot that will allow you to answer your own questions and ask even bigger ones!

"Puppy is a great tiny-footprint distro for older machines, but it sacrifices any semblance of ease-of-install in-so-being."

?
Puppy has gparted to partition and format hard drives, and a graphical installation wizard... as long as he boots OK from CD you should be OK.

BTW I've got a computer that refuses to boot Windows or a conventional Linux install, but boots a "frugal" Puppy install fine for some reason although I suspect it is the motherboard that is faulty, not the hard drive.

I have a Dell laptop that I must have XP installed on for work. I have Puppy installed on a 2g flash drive to use for personal use. I store the .sfs files on the flash drive and when I boot from that it loads the drivers for my wireles N card as well as all the other settings. It allows me to use all the features of the laptop without ever touching the hard drive. It's fast and runs with no hitches. I disagree with some of the other comments in that I have found it to be pretty much point and click.

I installed Puupy on an old Fujitsu Lifebook. While it wasn't quite as easy as Xubuntu, which booted from LiveCD, examined my hardware, and had a running Linux session with no questions, it wasn't what I'd call hard.

Puppy required me to answer a couple of questions, like whether to use Xorg or XVESA, and what screen resolution to use, with a test to insure it worked, and Poof!, I had a running Puppy session.

A Full install to HD wasn't hard either, using GPartEd to resize the existing Windows partition, and carve out slices for Puppy and a swap file.

Granted, I'm not a total newbie. I've used computers starting with IBM mainframes and working down for many years, and have used other flavors of Linux. But I still wouldn't call Puppy installation an insuperable task, even for a newbie.
______
Dennis

I am what on the Puppy forum mentioned earlier is called a rank beginner, yet I installed and started using Puppy with little difficulty, except for installing a certain printer, but got around that by installing another. The thing to understand about Puppy is that you can run it off a live CD entirely out of memory, provided you've got enough memory; I run on 384 Mb - a lot less than the recommended 512 Mb, and as far as I can tell with lots of capacity to spare. My understanding is that you don't need the hard drive, but you do need some other storage medium for a settings storage file - if you can burn to that CD, even that will do. But don't take my word for it - I am just a rank beginner -- go to the site mentioned above, where they'll set you right in no time at all.

JC

Yes you can run puppy without a hard drive, usb stick or even the cd, because it runs 100% in memory
I've booted up a puppy cd without any hard drive installed, then removed the cd and used puppy live in memory for 3 days straight, how good is that?

Lest we forget... this is how my suggestions approached things...