[ale] Strange drive (fdisk) output?

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 23:35 -0500, Christopher Bergeron wrote:
> Thanks for the tips!   Is there a way I could take a bootsector from the 
> working drive and copy it onto the failed drive?
> Perhaps:
> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=1024?  What bs size should I specify, and 
> does it even matter?

Given that the drive doesn't work at all, I suspect that the damage is
physical and not logical. The 'dd' command would certainly overwrite the
entire drive but it would fail at the end if hda is logically larger
than hdb.

I don't think the boot sector is corrupted, I think it is physically not
accessible. Unless the data on the flaky drive is important (slurp it
off using a 'dd' command like above) I would try using the 'dd
if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=16' to obliterate the MBR and then
try to reformat the drive using fdisk.
> 
> In fact, now that I think about it, I may have killed the drive that 
> way.  I was mirroring my drives using dd, so maybe I specified an 
> incorrect block size and corrupted the drive?
> 
> Is there any way to correct the geometry of the drive using utilities, 
> or would my best bet be to copy the boot sector from another drive?  
> Failing that, I'm going to look into the warranty items (assuming, I 
> didn't corrupt it myself).
> 
> Kind regards and thanks again!
> Chris Bergeron
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 21:14 -0500, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> >> Given the low cylinder count that is missing and the total failure of
> >> the drive, I would surmise the boot sector has been destroyed.
> >>
> >> It ma be possible to resurrect the bad drive if the maker supplies a
> >> special "driver" disk that has low level format tools.
> >>
> >> If not, start looking for the receipt and the warranty.
> >>     
> >
> > Western Digital, at least in my experience, does not require a receipt 
> > or proof of purchase.  All they require for a warranty replacement is 
> > the serial number.  They look it up, determine whether or not it is 
> > still eligible for warranty, and if it is, they'll replace it provided 
> > that you follow their RMA instructions.
> >
> >     -- Mike
> >
> > --
> > Michael B. Trausch 	
> > fd0man at gmail.com <mailto:fd0man at gmail.com>
> > Phone: (404) 592-5746 	
> > Jabber IM: 	fd0man at gmail.com
> > fd0man at livejournal.com
> >
> > *Demand Freedom!  Use **/open/** and **/free/** protocols, standards, 
> > and software!*
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part