[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.

Ever since I ran the diagnostic tools, the drive has been incorrectly 
detected in the BIOS.  No matter what I put in or try to autodetect, it 
comes up to no more than 33.8 GB.  The diagnostic tools even show this 
as 33.8 GB, but for some reason are still smart enough to treat it as a 
160 GB hard drive.  (By the way, with the BIOS settings, even Linux only 
saw the drive as 33.8 GB.)  After setting up a 160 GB partition with the 
diagnostic tools, I went into Linux and ran mkfs.ext3 with a bad block 
check on the partition.  This time, mysteriously, there were no bad 
blocks, even though last time I got a handful at the end.

 From past experiences, can anyone tell me if this means the hard drive 
is just messed up and completely untrustworthy?  I'm thinking about 
using it one last time just to transfer my 80 GB worth of data and get 
an OS on my second drive.  I'm also thinking of just keeping it in as a 
"backup" drive and just running badblocks on it regularly.  Does that 
sound like a good idea?

Angelo

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