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Hello experts! I recently did a reinstall of Mandrake 7.2 (2.2.17 kernel) on my system
(with
"better" partition sizes etc.). Mysterious things have started happening to my second hard drive (hdb),
which
contains E: (FAT32), F: (FAT32), /usr (ext2), /home (reiserfs) and a / partition for a test Mandrake install. According to the kernel, my 2nd hard drive is "hdb: WDC WD400BB-00AUA1,
38166MB w/2048kB Cache,CHS=4865/255/63". It's a 40GB (38GB in reality) Ultra ATA 100 Western Digital hard disk. I have read about the WD disk problems but I don't think it affects me because I only have a Pentium-II-based motherboard, supporting only Ultra ATA 33 speeds. These are the "mysterious things that have started happening" (I will give
details of my partition structure below this!): 1. In MS-DOS Mode (of Windows 98 SE) I can no longer access my F:
Yet in Mandrake 7.2, Windows 2000, Windows 98 SE and BeOS5 Personal Edition, I have full, normal access to F: 2. MS-DOS (of Windows 98 SE) Scandisk reports the following errors with my E: ---------
"ScanDisk cannot read from the last cluster on drive E. This cluster is either damaged, or your system is not configured properly. Drive E may need to have Logical Block Addressing (LBA) enabled to work properly, or its disk partition may be incorrectly marked as a non-LBA partition. Data loss can occur if your LBA setting or disk partition type for this drivie is misconfigured. Check your computer's BIOS setup utility, or contact your
computer manufacturer, or have your computer checked by a qualified computer hardware technician. If you are sure your drive is configured correctly, click
Continue to have ScanDisk check drive E for errors. Continue Stop"
--------- I do have LBA enabled in my BIOS...
Clicking "Continue", gives this: ---------
"If your computer's LBA setting is configured improperly and ScanDisk continues, ScanDisk may report and repair errors incorrectly. This could result in severe damage to your data or could incorrectly mark sections of your drive as bad. Are you sure your system is configured properly?
Yes No"
--------- Clicking "Yes", gives this:
---------
" ScanDisk encountered a data error while reading cluster 1310730. ScanDisk will try to continue past this error. When ScanDisk
offers to perform a surface scan on this drive, choose Yes. Ok"
--------- Is my hard disk gone? I'm told that if an EIDE hard disk has an
error, I'm
in serious trouble because it's already used all its hidden "error tracks". Now WINDOWS 98 SE Scandisk reports 8192 bytes of bad sectors (this may, or may not, be due to having foolishly run the Windows 2000 chkdisk on E:)! Anyway, clicking "Ok" gives:
---------
" The E:\RICHARD\PROJEC~1\MAPFIL~1 file or directory is damaged and is currently unusable. Choose Fix It to have ScanDisk repair the file or directory.
To correct this problem, ScanDisk must delete the filename
information for this file or subdirectory. The file or directory will be given a new filename (for example, FILE0000.CHK) and saved in the root directory of the drive. Fix It Don't Fix It More
Info
" --------- I'm now forced to click "Don't Fix It" because, in short, another user,
Richard, won't let me fix the problem (please do not ask me why!). Because of this, MS-DOS Scandisk just refuses to continue scanning! The Windows 98 SE Scandisk does not pick up *any* of these errors but in
the
"Summary" it reports 8192 bytes of bad sectors. If Microsoft's MS-DOS Mode Scandisk can pick up so many errors, why not Windows' Scandisk? This is very strange. Here is info about my partition structure:
--------------------------------
cat /proc/partitions (I have added comments): -------------------------------- major minor #blocks name 3 0 6297480 hda 3 1 2104483 hda1 C: FAT32 3 2 1 hda2 3 5 2096451 hda5 Windows 2000 NTFS 3 6 1012063 hda6 / Linux ext2 3 7 257008 hda7 swap Linux swap 3 8 827316 hda8 D: FAT32 3 64 39082680 hdb 3 65 1 hdb1 3 69 15727603 hdb5 E: FAT32 3 70 15735636 hdb6 F: FAT32 3 71 5502231 hdb7 /usr Linux ext2 3 72 1044193 hdb8 /home Linux reiserfs 3 73 610438 hdb9 / Another Linux install (ext2)! 22 0 532562 hdc -------------------------------------------
fdisk /dev/hdb, followed by p ------------------------------------------- The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4865. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4865 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 2 4809 38620260 5 Extended /dev/hdb5 2 1959 15727603+ b Win95 FAT32 <- this my E: /dev/hdb6 1960 3918 15735636 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hdb7 3919 4603 5502231 83 Linux /dev/hdb8 4604 4733 1044193+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb9 4734 4809 610438+ 83 Linux ---------
cat /etc/fstab --------- /dev/hda6 / ext2 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 /dev/hdb8 /home reiserfs defaults 1 2 /dev/hda1 /mnt/c vfat user,exec,umask=0 0 0 /dev/hda8 /mnt/d vfat user,exec,umask=0 0 0 /dev/hdb5 /mnt/e vfat user,exec,umask=0 0 0 /dev/hdb6 /mnt/f vfat user,exec,umask=0 0 0 /mnt/floppy /mnt/fd0 supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/hdd 0 0 /mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom supermount fs=iso9660,dev=/dev/cdrom 0 0 /dev/hda5 /mnt/nt ntfs user,exec,umask=0 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb7 /usr ext2 defaults 1 2 /dev/hda7 partition swap defaults 0 0 -------
mount ------- /dev/hda6 on / type ext2 (rw) none on /proc type proc (rw) none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620) /dev/hdb8 on /home type reiserfs (rw) /dev/hda1 on /mnt/c type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,umask=0) /dev/hda8 on /mnt/d type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,umask=0) /dev/hdb5 on /mnt/e type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,umask=0) /dev/hdb6 on /mnt/f type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,umask=0) /mnt/floppy on /mnt/floppy type supermount (rw,fs=vfat,dev=/dev/hdd) /mnt/cdrom on /mnt/cdrom type supermount (rw,fs=iso9660,dev=/dev/cdrom) /dev/hda5 on /mnt/nt type ntfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,umask=0) /dev/hdb7 on /usr type ext2 (rw) automount(pid488) on /misc type autofs (rw,fd=8,pgrp=488,minproto=2,maxproto=4) automount(pid508) on /net type autofs (rw,fd=8,pgrp=508,minproto=2,maxproto=4) ----------------------------------------------------
cat /etc/lilo.conf (note: my bios or motherboard *does* support lba32 and I have used it in this file before and it works fine...can't be bothered changing lilo.conf now! :) It works without the option anyway!) ---------------------------------------------------- boot=/dev/hda
read-only prompt timeout=50 vga=ext message=/boot/message other=/dev/hda1
label=Windows\ 98/2000 table=/dev/hda image=/boot/vmlinuz
root=/dev/hda6 vga=0x314 label=Mandrake\ Linux image=/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 label=Linux-nonfb image=/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 label=Linux-Failsafe append="failsafe" image=/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 label=Linux-Single append="single" image=/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb9 label=Mandrake2 ------------- END OUTPUT -----------
I have a warranty on my second hard disk. So is my hard disk gone (I
hope
not, because it's going to be hard to back up 40GB of data on floppies!)? Or is it a fixable partition problem?
I'm worried about those bad sectors and errors. I annoyed that I
can't
access my F: in MS-DOS (that's where I like to put all my DOS games!) I would appreciate any help that anyone can provide.
Please help me! Thanks,
George P.S.: If I'm sending too much unrelated information please tell me.
If you
need more info on my problem, please tell me also! |
