[ale] Strange drive (fdisk) output?

[Matt Kubilus]

Keep in mind that even "identical" drives may not have the same disk
geometry.  Though "120000000000 bytes" is a little fishy.  Don't be
surprised if a replacement "identical" drive has a different geometry
as well.

If you can't can't access the disk, likely you have a physical problem
with the disk.  Some manufacturers have tools that you can download to
scan drives for bad sectors, or checkout the 'badblocks' command.

I suppose your partition table could have gotten hosed.  If this
doesn't have important data, try removing all the partitions and see
if you can create new ones/format them.

Tip of the day:
backup your MBR and partition table with "dd bs=512 count=1
if=/dev/<myhdd> of=myhdd.mbr"
Zero your MBR with "dd bs=512 count=1 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<myhdd>"
Restore your MBR with "dd bs=512 count=1 if=myhdd.mbr of=/dev/<myhdd>"

-Matt

On 1/29/07, Christopher Bergeron <christopher at bergeron.com> wrote:
> Guys, I'm having some problems with a WD 120GB drive. I have 2 identical
> drives in my fileserver, however, one of them is showing up differently
> in fdisk.
>
> Here's the output that I'm getting:
>
> [root at fileserver ~]$ fdisk -l
> Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes <------ this drive works great!
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders <------ good # of cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 1 14593 117218241 83 Linux
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Disk /dev/hdb: 120.0 GB, 120000000000 bytes <------ problematic drive
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14589 cylinders <-------- bad # of cylinders???
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hdb1 1 2433 19543041 83 Linux
> /dev/hdb2 2434 7297 39070080 83 Linux
> /dev/hdb3 7298 12161 39070080 83 Linux
> /dev/hdb4 12162 14589 19502910 83 Linux
>
> Both of these drives are identical hardware. The drive that is showing
> 12000000000000 bytes is not working at all. I can't format partitions,
> etc. Is it because the drive geometry isn't correct? Is there a way I
> can correct the geometry on the drive so it reflects the working drive?
>
> Thanks for any leads!
>
> Kind regards,
> Chris Bergeron
>
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>


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