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 GBHDD'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. To unsubscribe send to ncolug-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
