[ncolug] Re: General Live CD Question
- From: nor thern <zboson2003@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:15:38 -0800 (PST)
SATA should be set to auto in Bios. a live cd that can copy to ram such as Slax
is useful.Slax 200MB uncompresses to 600 MB ram used , which is ok for most
sytems.
Earlier today I was called by a friend to try to resurrect a computer. They
had suffered a Hard Drive failure on their boot drive. The very simple error
message read, "Drive read Failure, press <ctrl-alt-delete> to try again." I'll
give some more details for the "fixit geeks" in a little bit. However, I first
have a rather simpler question to ask:
As a good FOSS supporter, I took a few Linux Live CD Distro's with me on my way
over to investigate. Unfortunately, none of them ever got to boot since the
Disk read Failure message brought the machine to a halt before any of them got
to load. Using the Windoze XP installation CD, that error was bypassed and the
Windoze installation programs did load. Is this a machine specific issue, or
are there any Linux Live CD Distro's that can also bypass that hardware check
that prevented the load from CD option?
I was hoping to use the Linux environment to verify and reassure my friend that
her data was still safe on the second physical HD that had been installed in
the system a year ago. Unfortunately, as stated, the only CD that would boot
despite the HD error was the Windoze Install CD. I even verified that two of
the Linux Live CD's were good after that visit by using them to boot my machine
into Linux variants that are not installed on my machine.
OK, Details time for the "geeks":
The machine in question is a Dell Dimension 4600 with an Intel 2.66GHz
processor that WAS running WinXP.
Memory 2 GB
HDD's 40GB SATA primary on primary controller card, 160GB SATA on secondary
controller card.
Running Windoze Repair Console, revealed that the 40GB drive had the read
error. Using FDISK to remove and re-establish the partition did not fix the
issue. Running FIXMBR on the drive was also unsuccessful. Running FIXBOOT
allowed FORMAT to run, but it failed with unrecoverable drive errors. Running
Disk Diagnostics from the Boot menu returned an error code 7. Searching
through Google, I found that a low level format MAY recover the disk as a
usable device and I found a DOS based tool that is FOSS that includes an ISO
for creating a bootable CD to try this solution. (Whether it will work when no
CD's other than the WinXP CD has yet booted successfully is a question.)
Yes the machine is worth trying to recover as it is only a few years old and
other than the HD issue is more than adequate to the owner's needs. Please
remember the details were more for anyone who might want to throw out helpful
suggestions on this particular machine. My real request is for instructions on
finding a Linux Live CD that will boot like the WinXP install CD despite HD
errors potentially allowing for recovery of data from a second HD in a
non-bootable, yet otherwise functional machine.
Thanks again for all the help.
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