CANT BOOT!!!

[Duncan Anderson]

Charles Malespin wrote:

> Hey guys, thanks for all the responses.  Here is where I am at right 
> now....
>    So I booted up with knoppix, and got into my computer.  Mounted my 
> drive, have access to it etc.  I ran a fsck test and started getting a 
> bunch of errors saying that inode #####  is bad, ignor error?
> I say yes, then it asks me to repair?  I say yes, and this goes on and 
> on and on.  I lose patience and dont feel like clicking yes over and 
> over.  fsck -a (automated to say yes to all) doesnt work either, 
> prompts me and says that i have to do it manually.  So I dont want to 
> run this without backing up my data.  Thats becoming a problem.  I 
> have an extra partition that is empty and I just wanted to dump my 
> /etc and /home on there.  Well I needed to format it, and both fdisk 
> and qtparted crap out and dont let me do it.  So I basically need to 
> get my data off so I can completely run fsck and not lost anything.  I 
> have managed to get into windows now, but thats not much more than I 
> can do.  I did a hard drive diagnostic test from Dell(comes when you 
> push F12) and it said that I failed that test.  I dont know what it 
> tests for or what it means.  So basically I am stuck and out of 
> ideas.  The weird thing is, I was using a variant of knoppix yesterday 
> and my drives were coming up fine, but now with the real knoppix cd it 
> cant find them.  I am so aggrevated, Im sure that I am leaving 
> something out.  Let me try and gather more info and post back. Thanks 
> again, any more ideas/questions would be great
> Charles

Hi Charles

 From your description, I can safely say I have been in the same 
situation as you find yourself in right now. Your best bet would be to 
remove the disk drive, get hold of another drive, install Linux on it, 
leaving room for a spare file system large enough to hold the data you 
wish to keep from the original disk. Install the old drive as a 
secondary drive and then mount it and copy what you need onto the new 
file system on the new drive. Afterwards, try to get hold of the 
manufacturer's low level formatting utility for your drive (a normal 
BIOS low level format probably won't work too well) and format the 
drive. It may be a waste of time, depending on the cause of the drive 
failure. Don't assume that the old drive is OK if it seems to format OK. 
Try testing it for a while before you trust it with data.

good luck
Duncan

		
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