[clue-tech] Help with 2 hard drives on same IDE

[David L. Anselmi]

Angelo Bertolli wrote:
[...]
> Well, to pull this back to topic, is there a way for me to test the 
> integrity of the drive using Linux?  e.g.  I am currently getting 
> "volume appears to contain one  or more unrecoverable problems" using 
> Windows' chkdsk (fsck substitute) with a surface test.  I don't mind 
> reformatting the whole drive and doing a surface test with Linux.  How 
> can I do this?

First is to copy everything you care about off the drive.  You can boot 
Linux from a CD for this.  You can make partition images with dd et. 
al., or mount the partitions and copy by file (all files, some files, 
whatever).

Then you should get the WD diagnostics floppy (CD, whatever), boot from 
that and run the quick and full tests.  If you can't get the drive to 
pass those reliably, get a new drive.  If it's under warranty (the WD 
site will tell you based on serial number) the new drive is free.

I had a drive that had trouble and the diagnostics fixed it.  A few 
weeks later it had the same trouble and back it went, even though the 
diagnostics fixed it again.

After the diagnostics report good you can run badblocks in Linux.  Most 
likely the drive handles bad blocks itself and will be clean (there's a 
way to check it's internal spare block list but you'll have to google 
for that).

If all is well, you reformat and reinstall to fix the chkdsk issue. 
You'll only lose files that weren't able to be copied in the first step 
above and chances are that those won't be files you cared about.  But to 
be safe, don't use the copies of OS files--you don't want to replace 
what you just installed with a corrupt version.

HTH,
Dave
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