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'Hard drive read error' - FS diagnostic tools??

 
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Hi all,

A friend of mine has a laptop (Toshiba, relatively new) that displays 'hard drive read error' (or something, basically "my HDD barfed") immediately upon power-up.

Now, this is fine - it's a work laptop, and there's no problem with returning it broken, the catch is he'd like to ensure that either (1) the HDD is really dead, or (2) some stuff is removed before it's returned. Before you get any naughty ideas, it's stuff like The Sims ;0.

Anyway, my plan is to boot up with a Linux-style disk and run some diagnostic tests. Because it's a laptop, I can't really pull the disk out and plug it into a box that works.

So, my question: does anyone know a good site for info on how to diagnose this sort of thing, and what (Linux-based) FS diagnostic tools exist? It's an XP Pro machine, so I guess it's on NTFS (???).

If anyone can point me at some useful sites I'd be much obliged!

Cheers,



--Tim
 
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Sounds ominous.

Have you tried to boot from a windows XP disk? This should give you a recovery shell. To be honest though, the ntfs partition should note cause this kind of problem.

I use BSD which gives me a CD which also provides me a recovery shell, so I am sure there must be something similar for Linux.

Jon
 
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Boot in any of the live CDs (gentoo, knoppix), and do basic harddrive testing (looking at partition tables, etc). Try to use shred or wipe program to wipe your harddrive clean.
 
Tim West
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Thanks guys. I'll be using LindowsCD - completely inappropriate distro, but I happen to have it at home so I save the download.

I was also hoping for some links to info on the actual process of data recovery/problem diagnosis...the obvious Google searches aren't turning up much useful.

That said, one thing that turned up...Looks like in the first instance I actually want to boot off a Windows floppy and run chkdsk, and see how that goes.

Any tips appreciated, but from here I should be right to hack around and get somewhere.

Thanks,


--Tim
 
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Ok to get read of stuff you can do fdisk or partition magic.
If you wona see if someone will be able to read it go with
winternals admin software (trial works for about 15 days).
If I am you I would do fdisk.
 
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