Cannot boot when harddisk with NTFS is plugged

[tinybox]

I have exactly that very same problem that lissyx describes at the top of this thread. Everything works w/ Knoppix-3.7 but 3.8.1 hangs right after the "creating /etc/fstab". I think the problem is not related to NTFS although there is an NTFS partition on the disk in question too. The reason for the hang in my case was because knoppix wanted to enable a swap partition that it found on the disk in question.

What I did as a recovery was to boot knoppix-3.7 and I wiped out the swap partition as well as the ext3fs that was used for installing knoppix-3.7. After that I was able to cleanly boot knoppix-3.8.1 from the CD.

Next step I tried was to install knoppix-3.8.1 on that disk. I ran into numerous problems. Which all ended with processes hanging on the disk access, e.g. "fdisk -l /dev/hdb" never came back, :mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdb3" never came back....

It is exactly the same pattern that lissyx described. "dmesg" showed tons of errors like:

..... status=0x51 {DriveReady SeekComplete Error}
..... error=0x10 { SectorIDNotFound } .......

I am confident that the disk is ok as WindowsXP doesn't report any errors, of course it doesn't access exactly the areas where knoppix wanted to get its hands on. I have tried to boot knoppix with "nodma' but this didn't make a difference.

My next step is now to re-install knoppix-3.7 so see whether that still works as it did before and if it does, then I will give it another try with knoppix-3.8.1. I will get back to this thread here and post the results.

PS: I am very confident that this is not a hardware problem. It suspect it is something in knoppix' linux-2.6.11 configuration. Perhaps the "IDE multi mode" config variable was not set? (speculating!)

[tinybox]

as I already stated I was indeed able to install knoppix-3.6 (didn't have my 3.7 handy) on that disk. However, as it turned out it seems to be a hardware problem with the disk. Will replace the disk and try again. If the problem persists I will report here. If everything runs smoot, which is what I expect, I will not post any followup.

[lissyx]

I've just seen that Knoppix 3.9 is available. I'll try with this release and give you feedback !

[lissyx]

So, i'm at home, and just tried the Knoppix 3.9. Problem is still here, and symptom are equals.

[ChrisDennis]

I know this thread is old, but I've just come across the same problem.

Running Knoppix CD 4.0.2 on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000, it hangs with the message about 'creating fstab'. In failsafe mode, it hangs trying to run fdisk.

If I use Knoppix 3.6, it creates an fstab that includes:

/dev/hda /mnt/hda auto noauto,users,exec 0 0

Note that's /dev/hda, NOT /dev/hda1. If I try

mount /dev/hda

I get

FAT: bogus logical sector size

(it's an NTFS disk). Now fdisk gives

/dev/hda1 * 1 4864 39870048+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

which looks reasonable. I tried

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda

and got

mount: error while guessing filesystem type
HDA1: bad access: block=0, count=1
etc.

smartctl thinks the disk is OK.

The only reason I'm running Knoppix on this PC is to check the hard drive, because XP seems slow, but I mention it here because it seems to be an ongoing issue with Knoppix

regards

Chris