Feisty live CD killed HD

[NoOp]

On 09/04/2007 08:14 AM, Rashkae wrote:
> Liam Proven wrote:
>> On 04/09/07, m_epling <m_epling at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>  thats crazy ...you must be a windows FUD person . no way a live cd can
>>> destroy a hard rive even during a format
>> 
>> Just a small point of order. A software operation *can* render a hard
>> disk permanently useless.
>> 
>> An example:
>> 
>> Errors in track 0 cannot be mapped out in software, as track 0 is
>> where the bad-block error map lives.
> 
> Bad blocks in track 0 can't be mapped, but any data written here by 
> software in error can most certainly be corrected.
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd? should neatly wipe out any information, good 
> or bad, on the hard drive, including anything in the partition tables or 
> boot sector.
> 
> 
> 

I was given an old Windows ME computer w/20G AT Fireball hard drive. The
computer seemed to be working well with ME (as far as one can say 'work
well' w/ME). I didn't put it through it's paces in Windows, but
immediately set to installing Ubuntu 7.04 via the alternate CD.
Somewhere in the process the drive experience read/write errors. Most
likely the drive was bad to begin with and Windows ME was hiding the
errors. Reformating, dd, test disk etc., failed to fix the drive and it
is now in my 'beat with a hammer' pile. Could very well be the same case
with the OP; the drive might have been failing all along & installing
Ubuntu just brought out the errors in the drive.