Failed hard drive?

timm · 2009-03-20 03:29:20

I've been having some odd problems with pacman reporting that packages were corrupt, and about the same time started getting system boot errors due to a corrupt file system. I booted with the live arch disk and did a fsck.ext3 on the /dev/sda3, which is where the errors were reporting from. It found and I fixed a lot of errors. I then ran it again, and it gave me, as best I can tell, the exact same list of errors. I used the -c option ( I understand that is supposed to write out bad blocks), and it gave me the same errors.

I can boot sometimes, but odd things fail, like mythbackend, or pacman. Is this drive failing or is there something else I can do to get the errors corrected?

toffyrn · 2009-03-20 05:26:49

Its hard to tell, but trying on a different computer should give you some ideas.
(Or alternatively try another hard drive)

I actually had this problem a month ago. Sometimes it wont start, fsck errors every time, programs crashing, and at last the entire desktop struggled. Even the cd-rom wouldnt work. Switching harddrive fixed it for me

timm · 2009-03-21 19:29:17

I put a new drive in and tried to clone the old /dev/sda to it

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc

Big drives, took awhile. When it finished, I ran through the disk with the Arch Live CD, all looks good, the partition table on the new drive matches the old, ok. I pulled the cables off of the original /dev/sda and plugged in the former /dev/sdc so it is now /dev/sda.

But it won't boot. I just get a flashing cursor where I should see Stage 2.

According to what I read elsewhere, by doing the entire drive the MBR should have been transferred and this new drive should be ready for deployment.

Update: I plugged the original sda in, unplugged the original sdc, and tried booting this configuration. Now my original setup also gets to the flashing cursor and stops.

I found an option on the Arch Live CD to boot the existing system, tried that, got an Error 15 File not found.

Now what?

Last edited by timm (2009-03-21 20:23:30)

timm · 2009-03-21 21:20:37

More weirdness. I gave up on the new drive and did a full new install. It won't boot.

I went into the Live CD and tried to boot my existing system. It reports that root is (hd0,0), and the filesystem is jfs. Well, there is a jfs partition on the drive; sda4, but the /boot partition is ext2 and the / partition is ext3.

It then shows the kernel line

and gives me an Error 15, file not found.

Tried a second install, FTP this time, all appears to go fine, same end result. Flashing cursor, no boot.

Last edited by timm (2009-03-21 22:21:10)

Zyclone · 2009-03-22 00:44:58

If the drive is failing, I would run a hard drive test. Either from your computer or hard drive manufactuor. There is a CD called the ultimate boot CD . It runs the dos apps from the the manufactors.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It does look like files are getting corrupted. So I would run the diagnostics

timm · 2009-03-22 01:44:40

I'll check with that soon, but first getting a boot. What seems to have happened is that during my travels on this project I may have installed grub to the mbr of my data disk. Linux seems to get confused about that even though it is also installed on my system drive. I pulled all other drives from the system and now the "jfs" information is gone; jfs is on my data drive.

I am reinstalling with only one drive to make sure that works, then will have to figure out how to get grub off of the data drive.

One drive install worked, I deleted all partitions and started from scratch on that drive, managed to get it up and running. I made slightly larger partitions than on my old drive so I could try a dd again with each partition. After I installed the other drives I re-installed to get everything lined up and to make sure this would work, it did. I then did a dd from each of the partitions on my old drive, that was successful.

I am still getting an error at boot that appears to me to be from a corrupt file, but that is something for a different thread. Once I'm back up, I'm going to run the program noted above to check the status of the old disk to see if I can rehab it and use it again or if it needs to be pulled.

Last edited by timm (2009-03-22 05:50:28)

nblock · 2009-03-22 08:23:33

if your drive support SMART you could try smartmontools to test your hard drive.

timm · 2009-03-26 23:03:06

Tested the drive both ways, shows no errors. Not sure what is going on.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-20 03:29:20

Failed hard drive?

#2 2009-03-20 05:26:49

Re: Failed hard drive?

#3 2009-03-21 19:29:17

Re: Failed hard drive?

#4 2009-03-21 21:20:37

Re: Failed hard drive?

#5 2009-03-22 00:44:58

Re: Failed hard drive?

#6 2009-03-22 01:44:40

Re: Failed hard drive?

#7 2009-03-22 08:23:33

Re: Failed hard drive?

#8 2009-03-26 23:03:06

Re: Failed hard drive?

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