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**dibl** · Jan 06, 2009, 06:59 PM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Were the two drives that died the same brand and model? It's pretty strange to have two hard drives die like that.

When they are connected and powered, do they show up in your BIOS? If not, that's a pretty convincing indicator that they are dead ducks. If so, then if they don't show up in Linux (Knoppix, Gparted Live CD, Kubuntu Live CD, etc.), that's an indicator of some issue with BIOS settings. On my system, the SATA drives have to be set as "AHCI" mode to work correctly. But over the holidays I build a PC (Asus P5Q Pro mobo) and set it up for dual boot, and Windows would not recognize the SATA drive until I set is as "IDE" mode. So, you might want to fiddle with the SATA mode settings.

That's all I've got ....

**toad** · Jan 07, 2009, 02:12 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

And even more "dead useful" advice from me:

Open the box, unplug the drives and plug them in again 8)

I know, it can't get much better than that

but it actually HAS worked for me before

**bag** · Jan 07, 2009, 06:04 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Dibl,

Yes, in fact, all three are the same brand and model - with sequential serial numbers - which is even more scary for me! If two have gone, then it's a possibility that the third will go soon as well!!

Will reboot later and check to see if they show up in the BIOS. Will also review AHCI mode etc. But they all worked well up until recently (about six - eight weeks ago). They're all now around 2 1/2 years old.

Will let you know how I get on.

Toad,

Will try unplugging and replugging the drives. Will let you know how it goes.

It's worked for me once too - on an older windows PC. Up until now though, I've just unplugged the one drive that died a few weeks back...

**bag** · Jan 08, 2009, 04:55 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Dibl,

Right then, some interesting info. This is the same info as I will post in one of my other open posts in a minute, to do with USB drives...

In that post (http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3100744.0), I was referred to a discussion about the latest kernel version that was causing problems with RAID etc.

Anyway, I switched off the PC, plugged back in the SATA cable for the drive that had died previously and rebooted.

I went to have a dig around in the BIOS.

In there, I could see that everything was detected. Three identical internal 400GB drives, two USB attached external drives (although they showed up as internal drives), both DVD-RW and DVD-ROM drives. Everything was there.

Then I booted up and chose the older kernel.

Booting back in to Kubuntu, I can now see all three SATA drives. QtParted shows them all. My second hard drive that was previously missing is now there. All data seems to be there. Have not checked/verified integrity, although don't know how to do that really. The third drive (which was previously disconnected from the motherboard on the assumption that it was dodo-like) is there too. Need to review what's on it - if anything. Can't remember if I wiped it as part of the reinstall...

So really, the second hard drive (with my data on it) seems fine under the older kernel. I can access it and the data appears to be there. The third one seems to be there too - although I will need to see how good the drive is... whether it is stable and so on.

It may be just that this kernel issue has caused me to lose my RAID drives - but that in actual fact the disks themselves are OK.

For now, will just use the older kernel.

However, one final question. Can someone point me in the direction of any suite of tools to verify whether hard disks are working correctly, have faults on them, have problems with the disks/blocks etc etc. I know that there's a S.M.A.R.T system and that these drives are S.M.A.R.T capable - can I run tests using this?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bag.

**dibl** · Jan 08, 2009, 05:55 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Interesting, indeed. So the drives aren't dead, but there's a kernel issue. I have only Western Digital SATA drives, but I have 4 of them, two different models, and I've never seen a problem running Linux (3 or 4 different distributions). What is the brand and model of your motherboard? With the optical drive problem, and this problem, I'm wondering about the chipset features and BIOS. Is your BIOS the latest version for that model?

**bag** · Jan 08, 2009, 06:55 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Dibl,

Yes - it would seem that it's a kernel issue - from my reading of the posting on the redhat site. Have you read that posting? Is that your understanding too?

Drives - can't say about both of them. Only the one that still had data on it. That one seems to be perfectly intact. The other (now that I remember) was wiped when I ran some destructive utility on it that tried to test all blocks/sectors on the disk. We had a powercut half way through and the UPS shut it down... Don't have time now to check and try to set it up, but will do that later. Will set up the drive with a partition and then run a check on it. Only plan to copy some data there and see if it's OK.

Anyone know of a utility I can use (preferably non-destructive) that can check the disk for me?

Motherboard...

Now you're testing me... I'll have a dig around.

Following a bit of a crawl around on the floor, I see that it's an MSI K9N Neo - MS-7260 ver 1.0. It's an AM2 motherboard, if that makes a difference.

One thing I can say though is that it most certainly doesn't have the latest BIOS version. Last time I checked (admittedly 18 months ago), it was an Online Update service and I seem to remember that it needed Windows to be able to update it. MSI have a utility that downloads and updates the BIOS for you... as long as you pay a windows tax for it.

Have just had a quick search - and apparently, it's still the same. However, some clever bods have also managed to find a way to get around that for Linux users.

So, if you're in a similar situation, using Linux and have an MSI motherboard and need to flash the BIOS, the links are attached below:

http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=122350.0
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1268953
http://www.linuxinsight.com/how-to-f...ppy-drive.html

I have never done this before so it's a bit of a step for me. But will try to do that tonight. See if it makes a difference. I'll report back on progress.

Later.

Bag.

**dibl** · Jan 08, 2009, 08:34 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

For the hard drive that was borked during a power outtage, you may have no way to retrieve your data, if any (other than send it to a commercial recovery service).

On the other hand, if there isn't any data on it and you merely want to restore it to functionality, you might be able to "dd" it back to life.

After making double-damned certain of the correct device ID (the /dev/sd#), using

Code:

sudo fdisk -lu

and

Code:

sudo blkid

you can use the dd command to re-zero the Master Boot Record:

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero /of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=1

which would work if your target device were the hard drive at /dev/sdc. You don't want to make a mistake on this one! They don't call it "data destroyer" for nothing.

Then you can use GParted to create a new partition table, create and format partitions, etc., assuming the drive is not electrically or mechanically damaged.

**toad** · Jan 08, 2009, 08:45 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

To check the disk there are a number of command line tools out there. You want to check the disk itself or the state of the file systems on there? If it is the latter the choice of tool depends on the file system in use (I don't know my way around RAIDS and LVM).

You may want to download the system rescue disk (google) and see whether one of the countless tools on there help.

I've used testdisk twice to restore lost/borked partition attempts.

**bag** · Jan 08, 2009, 09:59 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Dibl,

The hard drive that suffered the power outtage whilst being tested was shut down gracefully (I believe) by the apcupsd daemon. It's just that it didn't finish its work beforehand. However, it was doing a destructive test of some kind (as far as I remember) and all the data on the drive would have been lost anyway. So in fact, I'm not bothered about that.

I just want to try and bring the disk back to working order so that I can try and use it again. But I need to check that it is undamaged... As you mentioned, I need to check that it isn't electronically, mechanically or magnetically damaged. This is my problem now - do you know of specific tools to do this?

I presume this is an entirely different issue to trying to recover data on it. There's no data to recover - but I don't want to press it back into action if it's been permanently damaged and it's then a risk to my data...

Toad,

Will try testdisk later to see what I can find. I think it's in the repository so should be easy enough. Downloading a system rescue disk is one thing (I think I did it previously) - but if you've been following my other posts, my DVD drives are not working/being registered at the moment, so I certainly can't burn it, and might not be able to use it anyway. Will be checking tonight whether I can boot into a Live CD or not - that should show me whether the drives are dead, or whether it's just a problem with detection.

RAID and LVM went out of the window when the first disk went down (now presumably because of this kernel bug). I'm just running individual disks now - so should be easier to recover/re-setup if the disks are OK.

Basically - I want to test the disk itself. That's all. There's no data or filesystem on there. This can be a destructive test (for data) if necessary - as I said above to Dibl, I just want to make sure that the disk is actually OK before I put it back into service.

Any ideas on test software?

Thanks.,

Bag.

**dibl** · Jan 08, 2009, 10:23 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Mehhhh -- it's been a lot of years since I ran a media surface test or something like that, on a hard drive. I assume the testdisk utility that toad referred to would include this type of capability.

Most of the newer breed of hard drives have the S.M.A.R.T. self-monitoring technology. You use the smartmontools package to examine the "condition table" that the drives keep for themselves. I made a post on the topic some time ago -- *. Here's some help:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ht=smart+tools

I don't know that you can prove the negative -- i.e. that there wasn't some stressing event that left it in "about to give up" status. All you can do is run the tests, look at the S.M.A.R.T. record, and confirm that it is working correctly at the moment the test was run.

* here it is.

**bag** · Jan 08, 2009, 10:40 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Dibl,

You are a gentleman and a scholar, sir! (I assume, if avatars have anything to do with it!). I will look at these this evening and try it out.

Thanks for your help.

Bag.

**dibl** · Jan 08, 2009, 10:46 AM

Re: Lost hard drive.

Thank you bag -- a little appreciation is always, errr ... appreciated!

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