Questionable HD on Laptop

[Speculator1]

Hello

I've searched a few keywords and did not find direct answers, hence posting here for support.

The HD on my Laptop froze one evening, and would not respond to any input. Cyling power was the only option, and henceforth, would not boot. It was suggested (by another) that the HD had permanently failed, and data recovery would be impossible.

After flipping off the ignorant, I purchased a new laptop HD so I could at least use the laptop again, and research methods of recovery. Along came Knoppix! I was able to recover all my data files from the supposed "permanently failed" HD and life is now good.

Now, I have a new HD that is chugging along, and the "original" HD, which I'm not convinced is "permanently failed". The drive itself is only 13 months old, and has not be subjected to frequent shocks/vibrations/temp variations; it's led an easy HD life in a laptop. I'm thinking if i were able to recover data from the supposed "dead" drive, then perhaps it's really not dead, but some critical files got corrupted, and hence will not boot. It "seems" to access, spin, read/write, and do all the "normal" activities of a HD.

At this point, I would like to reformat it as if it were a new drive coming from a factory, such that it could be used as an external backup HD via USB. So, it would need to be able to blow away the existing partitions, and reformat it to NTFS.
Can this be done via Knoppix? It seems to be the only envirnoment which can read/write/access the flaky HD?

Your help on this matter would be appreciated.

[Harry Kuhman]

You should not format a disk with NTFS with Knoppix or any version of Linux. I actually don't think you can, but even if you find a way to do it, it would be unreliable. If you really want the disk partitioned and formatted NTFS, it should be partitioned and formatted with Windows.

Knoppix certainly can remove the current disk partition/partitions, putting the disk in a state ready to be formatted by windows, just in case Window can't or will not remove the corrupt partition.

I expect that you are correct, nothing is physically wrong with the drive. While there is a very small chance that the low level format is weakening, the most likely cause of your problem was the all too frequent habit of XP to muck up hard drives so bad that it can't read them. Sometimes it even manages to muck them up so bad that Knoppix can't recover files from them either (I have several of these), but in other cases like yours Knoppix can get the data just fine.

While you could use the older disk as a USB disk, you'll find that USB drives are rather slow. Another use that you might want to play with, at least while you still have an available, for all practical purposes empty, hard drive, would be to swap back in the old drive and install a Linux intended for hard drives to it. Not Knoppix, but Debian or some other Linux that you might like. I would do an Internet Install of Debain testing from a business card CD ISO, but there are plenty of other good choices also. Then you could have a laptop that, just by swapping drives, could be either a Windows Laptop or a Linux laptop. It might be a good way to migrate to Linux. And if you decide that you don't like having a Linux laptop, you can still always delete the partitions and let Windows partition and format it as an external NTFS drive. The actual utility of doing this depends on how easy it is to swap drives in your particular laptop. Some are easy, some require a bit more work. But you already know how much is involved in doing this for your laptop.

[Speculator1]

Harry,

Thanks for your thoughts.

In an attempt to "keep it under Windows" as you had suggested, I used Nero v7.0 and the MS Knowledge base to create a bootable CD.
I ran 2 tests with the bootable CD.

Test 1: New Funtional HD. Boot off of CD such that it would "read" the HD. No glaring errors, and left me with a CMD prompt.
Test 2: Old "dead" HD. Boot off of CD such that it would "read" the HD. No glaring errors, but let me unable to type at CMD prompt.

In summary, the information reported by both tests were identical. The only difference was that I was unable to type at the prompt in Case 2.

Currently, the problem HD can only be seen by Knoppix. Under Knoppix, I can read from, and delete from, but have not tried writing to the problem HD.
All these experiments still lead me to believe the HD is simply unrecognizeable by Windows but still functional.

At this point, I'd be willing to try to remove the existing partition, or completely format the HD for the matter in any way/shape/ or form through Knoppix seeing it is the only way the HD can be addressed. The desired end result is a useable HD which can be readily recognized by Windows. Further instructions would be appreciated.

To be honest, I'm not (currently) adventurous enough to convert this drive to an LINUX based setup as I honestly don't know enough about Linux to be able to effectively use its features. I know just enough to be dangerous, and that in itself is a small problem. A bigger problem would be the ignorance of being dangerous.

Merry Christmas,

[Speculator1]

Such time on my hands.

I see "QTParted" under "System" that looks like what I'm looking for.
Actually, I have two listings of "QTParted". One simply says QTParted, and the other says "QTParted Create, reorganize and remove partitions". I guess that latter is what I seek.

So great! I can use this tool to blow away the existing partition(s) of my HD, and then to create a new one. Next question is "How to format the newly created partition?"

Google seems to suggest opening a terminal window and using "fdisk". Ok. Sounds simple enough.
Will I be able to choose the file system (ie: FAT32 - I assume this'll be the case since the HD is 60GB)? I'd like to make it an NTFS, but I believe Harry mentioned that might not be a fun exercise.

BUT, if I got it to be a FAT-32, then, maybe Windows can "modify" a portion of it (partition) to be NTFS? Am I on the right track?

I'll wait for moral support before I go off with my half baked ideas and cause more headaches.

Merry Christmas.

[Harry Kuhman]

.....So great! I can use this tool to blow away the existing partition(s) of my HD, and then to create a new one. Next question is "How to format the newly created partition?"

Google seems to suggest opening a terminal window and using "fdisk". Ok. Sounds simple enough.
Will I be able to choose the file system (ie: FAT32 - I assume this'll be the case since the HD is 60GB)? I'd like to make it an NTFS, but I believe Harry mentioned that might not be a fun exercise.

BUT, if I got it to be a FAT-32, then, maybe Windows can "modify" a portion of it (partition) to be NTFS? Am I on the right track?....

You should be able to delete and create partitions with the tool that you found. To be honest, I do most of my formatting under windows with 3rd party tools like ranish partition manager, and create NTFS partitions with XP, but yes you should be able to partition the drive under Knoppix. I expect that if you just remove the problem partition then Xp could create the new NTFS partition that you think you want. But you should be able to do it your way and make a FAT32 partition. I don't know that I would trust XP in the FAT32 to NTFS conversion though. You have already seen that XP can muck up a NTFS partition, and it was reported back when Xp first came out that systems "upgraded" from FAT were far less stable than completely fresh XP installs. If you really want NTFS then I would try creating it with Xp after getting rid of the problem partition.

Of course, you could leave the drive as FAT32. The upside is that FAT32 doesn't seem to suffer the same XP corruption issues that NTFs does. The downside includes: Sometimes writing to FAT32 with different flavors of Windows OS (XP/Win98/2000/WinME) can corrupt the partition. And a FAT32 partition can't hold files larger than 4 gig (not that you want to write files larger than 4 gig over a USB link anyway). And FAT32 can't be encrypted with the built in tools XP has (warning: If you encrypt a NTFS partition Knoppix will never be able to recover the files from it when XP mucks it up, so you really don't want to do that.)

Good luck, let us know how you make out.

[Speculator1]

The HD Gods have reacted favorably towards my efforts to resuscitate a fellow brethren.

Knoppix was the tool I used to QTP the drive in question, and after fiddling around with it: creating, deleting, creating, deleting, (repeat), I said to myself, "self, why do I even need to format it at this point? After all, we want it to be run in a Win environment, so why not let Windows do this part?"

Recalling Harry's notes on the matter, and doing a man page on fdisk, it seemed like a reasonable proposition.

After all, I had a slight "feeling" that the files were so so corrupt and fubar-ed that the entire drive could not be recognized via Windows. It would make sense if it were just repartitioned, it could just start from scratch, and rebuild everything.

And so, the Gods agreed, and with simply using the QTP tool, the drive was now "recognize-able" by Windows, and thus began the long and tedious process of a system rebuild. The recovery disks would create a FAT 32 partition which would be a system recovery partition, and a secondary partition under NTFS, which would be where the active Windows build would live.

Life is now good.
The HD was just un-useable under Windows, thanks to Windows scrambling the hell out of it.
Knoppix did the "unscrambling deed" and allowed Windows to recognize it once again.
Upon recognition, the HD is fgully functional and operational.

I love those supposed "experts" that make such a conclusion ("your HD is completely dead, and you have to buy a new one. It died b/c it probably got too hot, and after a while, HD just cant work properly." This after explaining the age of the unit, oh... the random MTBF stickers they put on HDs, and their conclusions based upon..... what data????????

And to think these people charge upwards of ($75 US) per hour to work on/diagnose a problem, I wonder how many poor souls they have led astray due to their expert ignorance.

Help yourself first, then ask for help.
If the help given sounds "off", ask somewhere else.

This is where you'll find the "REAL" experts.

Thanks Harry,
Sorry for my diatribe.
Last post until something "bad" happens again.
I can be reached via email.