Thank you very much for the offer, however for the moment I will be unable
to take you up on it (as I do not yet have a replacement disk, plus I'm
living in Egham at the moment).
I'm beginning to think the HDD is pretty much doomed. If I leave the
laptop powered down for a few hours I can boot up (into windows or Linux)
for about 30 minutes max before it stalls again. On restarting it will
sometimes begin to boot, but I have also had the BIOS say it "Could not find
bootable disk".
Windows scan disk found several errors but didn't complete before it
locked up. I'm just trying see what Smartctl will produce.
I ran Memtest86 for about 30 minutes (1 pass) and it gave no errors but,
going by the other symptoms I've had, I'm doubting it is a memory problem
now.
I've managed to burn some DVD's of last minute backups so I'm no longer
too worried about data loss. I'm beginning to wonder if it would be worth
imaging the current disk to a new one due to file system/file corruptions.
Thank you all for the advice you've given so far, I'll keep you posted on
any progress I make.
-Alasdair-
On 12/6/06, john eayrs <jee@???> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alasdair Ross" <alasdair.ross@???>
> To: "HantsLUG List" <hampshire@???>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 10:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Dead/Dying HDD
>
>
> > OK, so after further googling, it appears that the "atapi.sys" error
> with
> > windows can be caused by faulty memory.
> > Will Memtest86 check for faulty memory?
> >
> > -Alasdair-
> >
> > On 12/5/06, Alasdair Ross <alasdair.ross@???> wrote:
> I presume this is 5th December
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > So, it's the night before I have to give a presentation (which I was
> > > working on) and the Hard Drive on my laptop appears to have decided
> that
> now
> > > is a good time to die. I have an Advent 7027 running Windows XP SP1
> and
> > > Kubuntu 6.06 in dual boot.
> > > The symptoms under windows are random BSODs (with errors such as
> > > "Unknown Hard Error" and "Kernel_Data_ Inpage_Error" and references to
> > > atapi.sys) and the system locks up at random intervals after
> increasingly
> > > short periods having booted up.
> > > The problems first occurred under Windows however, when I tried
> booting
> > > Linux it just locked up. The HDD light stays on and it sounds like
> it's
> > > doing something, but it doesn't get anywhere and requires a cold
> restart.
> > >
> > > My questions are:
> > > 1. What tools can I use to determine if it is a faulty HDD?
> > >
> > > 2. If I were to purchase a new HDD (most likely bigger than my current
> > > one), and assuming I can still read the old disk, could I copy
> everything
> > > currently on the old disk onto the new one in such a way that I could
> just
> > > swap the new one in and boot straight away without losing data or
> partition
> > > info? (Could I dd the old disk to the new disk and then use a tool to
> > > resize the partitions to fill the empty space on the new disk?).
> > >
> > > I'm quite out of my depth here but I'm willing to give just about
> > > anything a go. I would like to image the old drive onto the new one
> as
> I
> > > only have the system restore disk for windows so reinstalling is not
> > > possible. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to set up the VPN
> > > connections to my university under Linux so it is not yet possible for
> me to
> > > drop Windows completely (although rest assured, I am seriously
> considering
> > > going "Free" with my next PC purchase).
> > >
>
>
> It is possible to retrieve all your ur hard disk settings providing the
> hard
> disk still runs. This means that your should be able to run as before
> with
> a new drive.
>
> I have just spent since Saturday retrieving data from trashed partitions
> using software that I had to spend several hours searching for.
>
> Incidently I transfered all the data from a 40gb hard drive on my laptop
> to
> an 80gb hard drive via the USB2 port.
>
> I found that my dual boot worked okay in regard to windows but my suse
> linux
> distribution had changed.
>
> I ran knoppix on my laptop. Connected the new hard drive on the usb2
> port.
>
> Using dd with a blocksize of 10x1024x1024 I was able to transfer 40GB in
> about 31 minutes
>
> If your want manual help retrieving the contents of your hard disk and
> getting your windows running with your previous settings again I may be
> able
> to do it. I do not know enough about about linux to give any help in
> getting the linux to work. It can be tricky determining what is the best
> software to use in a particular situation. I need the practice in
> improving
> my knowledge in the area of recovering hard disk data. Let me know if you
> want to take me up on this. (No Charge).
>
> I have the connectors for connecting the laptop hard disk to the USB2
> port.
>
> John Eayrs
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@???
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
