I've been trying to catch up on all the mails (and I'm currently one month
behind on some subjects).
Anyway, when reading the problems some people have had with HDs I
remembered my old 252MB drive that didn't work. Since what I found out
could be usefull for some and I would imagine interesting for even more
I'll tell the story...
I booted up my computer with the broken HD and the one I normally use. Upon
entering FDISK I saw that it sat on D: (as it should) but that my RAMDRIVE
was reported as a drive on the second HD. After checking D: and S: I
noticed that the new HD wasn't in the system at all and that FDISK somehow
screwed things up.
So, I descieded to try the HD with a bootable floppy (containing most but
not all the utils actually needed when you need to install on a fresh HD).
Now the HD could be reached via C: but FDISK didn't see it at first. I
don't remember exactly what I did (probably "format c:") and then it showed
up in FDISK. Since eevrything seemed to be working I CHKDSKed the drive and
found 1MB in lost clusters (without ever beeing in use). I removed them and
the computer locked just as "C:\>" was about to be shown. I restarted and
DIRed the HD, and everything seemed to be correct so I copied some files
over. But in the process of copying command.com from a: to c: it locked again.
Upon inspection the file size was 0, so I descieded to try and create
files/directories on the HD. The directories were always there, but
whenever a file was created it changed the label (there was still a file)
and after rebooting the file would either be corrupted and/or an extra file
(often of incredible size like 1.4G) would show up.
After trying everything I could ever imagine I shut down the computer and
realised that perhaps Linux would handle the drive diffrently so I removed
it from my computer and inserted it into my Linux-server (after removing
the HD in it) and installed Slackware 3.6. The installation seemed to take
forever (I choosed to check for bad blocks on the Linux Native drive when
formating it). And at times I would hear a little sound (almost like
dripping water) from the HD. Not caring what happened to the HD I just let
everything continue on and installed SlackWare on it, rebooted and removed
the floppy. Now it atleast *seems* to work OK, even after rebooting.
Perhaps something others should try as well before throwing away the
"broken" HD?
Not that I would store anything of importance on that HD, but atleast it
can be used for storing programs and not so valuable data on.
BTW: Does anyone know how the jumpers should be set on a Conner CP30254 HD
so it's a slave? I would hate setting my other bigger/faster HD as slave
(especially if this one dies again and I would have to monkey around inside
of the computer more than I want).
Also what's the "normal" prices for a 5.25" -> 3.5" "sink" (I have no idea
of the name right now).
Oh, and for informations sake this extremly small Linux installation only
took some 30MB so someone who knows or is willing to learn could probably
get it down even more.
Also, what's the name for a swedish keyboardmap in SlackWare 3.6, I'm
running the finnish now but it's not perfect (but I thought the swedish and
finnish keyboards were identical, espacially since swedish is a rather
common language in Finland, so I must say I was a bit supprised).
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