[NTLUG:Discuss] HD problems from a Windows machine

[Russ]

On 12/20/05, Robert Citek <rwcitek at alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>
> On Dec 20, 2005, at 7:55 AM, Russ wrote:
>
> > Someone else replied, off the list, saying that possibly the HD was
> > defective already.  He said that where he worked they put the HD's in
> > the freezer for a while.  Now he might be pulling my leg but it may
> > also be a 'trick of the trade' that might help.
> >
>
> Nope, no leg pulling.  It is indeed a 'trick of the trade'.
>
>
> > If that's what it takes, I could do it but my friend says the only
> > important data is on five or six small Microsoft Word files.  I
> > thought doing a copy to a floppy would work.
> >
>
> How familiar are you with the command line?  If you are comfortable
> with working at the CLI, then you can boot up Knoppix into runlevel 1
> with "boot: knoppix noswap 1"  You then should be able to copy the
> files off the drive to a floppy, USB stick, another drive, or over a
> network.
>
> You had mentioned a kernel panic in an earlier post, which is quite
> odd for Knoppix from a CD.  If booting into runlevel 1 still has
> kernel issues, you can try "boot: failsafe nohwsetup 1"  The failsafe
> label avoids almost all hw detection, including disk.  Beware that it
> also won't detect any USB devices, including a USB keyboard.
>
> Good luck and let us know how it goes.

The HD in the freezer didn't seem to do anything.

The CD I'm using is Knoppix 3.7 (pressed) from Cheapbytes.  It's had a
good history without any problems either on this PC or others.

There are several things that are unusual.  Doing boot: knoppix noswap
1 or boot: knoppix nodma noswap 1 takes me to the same place with
pretty well the same amount of thrashing on the part of the CD-ROM. 
All this time, the HD light is either flickering or is on solid.  I've
never seen the HD light flicker or come on solid when noswap was
specified.

In any case, I'm at root at tty1

I have KNOPPIX, cdrom, dev, etc, mnt, proc, ramdisk, root, and sys all
listed as directories owned by root.

I have bin, boot, home, lib, opt, sbin, tmp, usr, and var all listed
as links and owned by root.

If I do a df in dev directory I get...

Filesystem      1K-blocks       Used  Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/root                 3471         775        2696     23%  /
/dev/scd0            715764    715764             0   100%  /cdrom
/dev/cloop          1947338  1947338             0   100%  /KNOPPIX
/ramdisk              199348          20     199320       1% /ramdisk

If I move to the mnt directory I have...

auto, hd, pts, sys, and test as directories owned by root and
cdrom and floppy as links owned by root.  There was a hda1 listed when
I was in the mnt directory before.  Now it isn't listed.  I seem to be
loosing access.

The CD-ROM was whistling/chirping though there isn't a light showing. 
Now it's silent.

Any advice is appreciated.  I'm not as familiar with command line as I
thought I was.


>
> Regards,
> - Robert
> http://www.cwelug.org/downloads
> Help others get OpenSource software.  Distribute FLOSS
> for Windows, Linux, *BSD, and MacOS X with BitTorrent
>
>
>
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>


--
Russ