Surprisingly, despite owning many computers, I’ve always managed to avoid a dead hard drive. I’m pretty sure that the HDD is dead on my current laptop, but I thought I’d confirm before buying a replacement.
My laptop booted fine this morning, apart from it was running a routine checkdisk which it does every ten boots or so. It got to 30% before I decided it was taking too long and cancelled it. After that wired networking wasn’t working, but wireless was. This sometimes happens, but a reboot will fix. No problem. Upon reboot, GRUB attempts to load Ubuntu, only to stall and eventually return Error 25. Reboot, same thing. And again. Apparently Error 25 is a problem reading the hard disk.
So, I borrowed an Ubuntu Live CD off my supervisor to try to run fsck to repair the hard drive. When it comes to doing anything with the LiveCD that involves reading the hard disk, as opposed the LiveCD itself, the whole thing stalls. Many more attempts at getting the hard drive repaired using the LiveCD to no avail.
I’m pretty sure this is a HDD failure. Am I correct? I don’t want to spend money on a new HDD if it could possibly be another component that’s failed.
Do you have a HD diagnostic program you can use? These used to come on diskette in the box when you get a new hard drive. IIRC any manufacturer’s program will work.
For example, here’s Western Digital’s free program. Might or might not work but I’d be worth a whirl.
Sorry… isn’t GRUB loaded FROM the HDD? Like… the MBR has to work to even load GRUB? Wouldn’t that mean the heads are OK, as are the motors and connections of the drive?
I’m not sure. It seems to halt prior to stage 1.5. So stage 1 is being run, which is stored in the MBR, but 1.5 fails, which is on the first 30kb of HDD space. I suppose the point is moot though now: I’ve just bought a brand new Western Digital HDD with more storage and a larger cache for £40, which should get here tomorrow. Messing around with GRUB and other utilities to get it working again would probably have taken just as long and sent me insane in the meantime :eek:
Tru dat. I remember a while back trying to rescue the SO’s Mac’s HDD and I’m man enough to admit that tears were shed during that ordeal… by all parties, except the Mac, which was obviously enjoying being a bastard.
Might I suggest that you download a copy of (Gentoo-based) System Rescue CD and keep it handy, rather than rely on your install disk?
Won’t help unless you take the time to familiarize yourself with what’s on it, but it’ll likely have everything you need for almost any diagnosis and maintenance, now and into the future.