On Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 02:17:28PM +0200, Kirk McElhearn wrote:
-> >>>> This is a resend of a message originally sent on
-> >>>> mercredi 29 mars 2000 9:08:13
->
-> On 29/03/00 4:43, John Aldrich [EMAIL PROTECTED] is reported to have
-> said:
->
-> >Your hdparm is too "aggressive." Your hard drive/controller can't deal with
-> >that level of HD access "optimization." It may be the default optimization
->
-> What is the hdparm, and what do you mean by optimization?
->
-> The problem is I can't even get the installer to run. After reformatting
-> my HD, and installing, when I go back to reboot or to run Mandrake, it is
-> dead.
What do you mean, "reformatting"? If you did a low level format of an IDE
hard drive, you may have destroyed it. The drive will appear to accept
writes, and will retain data for a while, but not for long, say 0-25
hours.
When IDE drives first came out, user reformatting was a major cause of
death of IDE drives. Most vendors later built protections against
formatting into their drives. I would think that the manufacturers would
retain this protection, but possibly you hit on an exception?
To determine if this is what happened, you will need a low level drive
verification tool. I used to use Spinrite for the purpose, but on't even
know if it is still available.
On the other tentacle, if it is a SCSI drive you should be safe. SCSI low
level formats are carried out by the controller, which is on the
drive. Other than feeding it bad parameters (like an incorrect sector
size), you can't damage it, and the bad parameters are recoverable by
formatting yet again.
->
-> Kirk
->
->
->
-> vice versa
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