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

[Angelo Bertolli]

David L. Anselmi wrote:

> 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.

The tests said there were no errors, which I didn't feel very confident 
in because they also said the hard drive capacity was 33.8 G, when it's 
a 160 GB hard drive.  I also used the utility to zero out the drive so 
I'm starting from scratch.

> 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.

But I won't get a new drive if this is the case, right?

> 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).

Since the drive is all zeros and not partitioned, is there an advantage 
to using a large or small block size?

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