Richard Atcheson writes:

Jim, have you tried booting with a floppy and doing an fdisk /mbr to begin with?

It won't do any harm but, on the other hand, MBR is by default rewritten during Grub installation so this action is not necessary.

I would use a dos boot disk with fdisk on it to start with. Of course, freedos will do the same thing.

I think the installation CD contains all software that he needs. -- A.M.

Hi all... thanks for your suggestions. I'll try them in the morning and let you all know how it goes tomorrow night. BTW, does anyone have an over 5GB HD (IDE or SCSI) laying around? If so, let's make a deal! Thanks, JIM On Friday 30 July 2004 21:19, Richard Atcheson wrote:

On Friday 30 July 2004 10:17 am, James Hatridge wrote:

...

Hi all...

I was given a used HD. The guy who gave it to me used a Norton program to write 0 and 1 all over the disk. He did this about 20 times (overkill I know, but it was his disk). Now the disk will not work. When I put it in my system the Bios can read the name and how large it is. But when I try to load Linux on it I get all kinds of errors. One error that jumped out at me was something about not being able to read the partition table.

Is there anything I can do to restore this disk? BTW its a Fujitsu MPF3204AH, 20.4GB.

Thanks,

Jim, have you tried booting with a floppy and doing an fdisk /mbr to begin with? Then I would look at partimage or any of the other hd utilities to see if I could see the partitions and maybe make one or two, then start the install. Why? His Norton may have wiped out the mbr as well.

I would use a dos boot disk with fdisk on it to start with. Of course, freedos will do the same thing. If you have it available, a boot cd with RIP-10 something will give you a bunch of disk utilities to play with. Richard

-- Jim Hatridge Linux User #88484 ------------------------------------------------------                  BayerWulf            Linux System # 129656          The Recycled Beowulf Project   Looking for throw-away or obsolete computers and parts    to recycle into a Linux super computer WartHog Bulletin Info about new German Stamps http://www.fuzzybunnymilitia.org/~hatridge/bulletin Viel Feind -- Viel Ehr' Anti-US Propaganda stamp collection http://www.fuzzybunnymilitia.org/~hatridge/collection

Hot Damn! It works now! Hi all.... Ok, I got two programs from the Fujitsu web site. One did a disk check and the other was a low level format. Anyway I first used the disk check. It said I had errors and to return the disk. Well, since it was the last thing I used the low level format and it fixed the disk! After the format I did a new disk check and it came up ok. So I loaded Linux (min system) on it. The only problem I had was that grub would not install by yast and I had to do it by hand. Anyway now I have a new HD that does not give me any errors. Thanks to everyone for your help! JIM On Saturday 31 July 2004 03:04, C. Richard Matson wrote:

On Fri July 30 2004 8:17 am, James Hatridge wrote:

...

Hi all...

I was given a used HD. The guy who gave it to me used a Norton program to write 0 and 1 all over the disk. He did this about 20 times (overkill I know, but it was his disk). Now the disk will not work. When I put it in my system the Bios can read the name and how large it is. But when I try to load Linux on it I get all kinds of errors. One error that jumped out at me was something about not being able to read the partition table.

Is there anything I can do to restore this disk? BTW its a Fujitsu MPF3204AH, 20.4GB.

Just a guess. Using Yast try formatting it as a fat filesystem and then with a Linux filesystem. It work once for me, but I may have been lucky, I did it on a Western Digital hard drive. Rich

...

Thanks,

JIM -- Jim Hatridge Linux User #88484 ------------------------------------------------------                  BayerWulf            Linux System # 129656          The Recycled Beowulf Project   Looking for throw-away or obsolete computers and parts    to recycle into a Linux super computer

WartHog Bulletin Info about new German Stamps http://www.fuzzybunnymilitia.org/~hatridge/bulletin

Viel Feind -- Viel Ehr' Anti-US Propaganda stamp collection http://www.fuzzybunnymilitia.org/~hatridge/collection

-- C. Richard Matson

-- Jim Hatridge Linux User #88484 ------------------------------------------------------                  BayerWulf            Linux System # 129656          The Recycled Beowulf Project   Looking for throw-away or obsolete computers and parts    to recycle into a Linux super computer WartHog Bulletin Info about new German Stamps http://www.fuzzybunnymilitia.org/~hatridge/bulletin Viel Feind -- Viel Ehr' Anti-US Propaganda stamp collection http://www.fuzzybunnymilitia.org/~hatridge/collection