Wojus weekend

pickarooney

Hi,
I'm not sure if this should be in Technology, Unix, After Hours or Personal Issues. I'm not really expecting any answers, but I feel like writing about the unpredictable complications of adding a new hard drive.

I had the following setup:
1x 40Gb HD, 3xFAT32 partitions of 5,15 and 5 Gb. Win 2000 Installed on 5Gb system disk. Other partitions contained data. Disk mounted on Primary IDE (master)
1x 3Gb HD, ext3 formatted with Mandrake Linux (partially) installed.
Disk mounted on secondary IDE (master).
The boot sequence was handled by LILO.

I swapped the 3Gb drive for a new 80Gb one. Started up, no drive recognised.
Changed boot sequence in BIOS. Same thing.
Booted to floppy and fdisk /mbr.
Reboot successfully into Win2k.
I intended to enlarge the system partition,(5Gb) to incorporate the other small partition on the 40Gb drive (also 5Gb) maybe change it to NTFS if all went well, install Linux on the remaining 25Gb and use the new 80Gb disk for data storage.
I used Partition Magic to merge the system partition with the other 5Gb.
I got some warning which I didn't retain and ignored (didn't seem too scary in fariness), then rebooted.
I never saw Windows again.
After a few unsuccesful attempts to fix the Win2k installation, from floppies and the installation CD (not a bootable CD, not sure if such exists for win2k?), I decided the best thing to do would be to install Linux quickly on the 80Gb drive, copy all the needed data to this drive and refromat the 40Gb disk. This went smoothly. With the 40Gb disk formatted, I started to install Windows 2000 on the 10Gb partition made by combining the smaller partitions (I actually had to wipe them both and create a new one with fdisk). Installer moaned about the MBR, which I formatted with fdisk.
It got to almost the end, started saving setting (second last step before removing temp installation files) then the computer hung. Left it for an hour or so, but there was no getting beyond it. Reboot and retry. Same thing, virtually the same place. Umpteen further attempts with similar results, sometimes a bit earlier in the installation process. I let the system cool for a couple of hours and tried again (It was 30ish degrees, new hard drive in place and only one small fan on my CPU and no others). Same shebang.
Reinstalled Linux (I'm sure there's a quicker way to recover LILO, but I had no access to the documentation) to check e-mail (I was an hour too late to accept an invitation to an all-night hooley in Belgium, wahey for me). Reboot and have another go at installing Windows. Wiped and formatted the 40 Gb disk, started install procedure and then got a scary dark blue screen of paralysis. Apparently my last cluster was jiggered, and maybe I should use or unuse LBA for drive C: (the error message was in Dutch for some unfathomable reason), disconnect any new hard drives, use chkdsk and reboot.
No idea what LBA is (Little Big Adventure in my memory) but I can at least access int0rw3b now, so I'll be no length finding out. Chkdisk didn't work, but Scandisk told me to call the hard disk medics ASAP. Gulp!

What can one do in such a situation. I'm assuming that through overformatting, overheating or the curse of the Wicked Witch of the Western Digital I'm one Hard Drive worse off, the clusterf*ck is something physical and irreperable, and that I'm going to have a hell of a time trying to hew a usable Windows partition out of the pre-formatted 80Gb Linux disk without losing the precious information stored thereupon.
(must hunt down XRoast so I can at least make some kind of solid backup).
I'm also assuming my browser will crash before I hit submit, and that I'll catch cancer from the infected disk.

So... anyone any hints, tips, words of advice, mocking finger-pointing, morals of stories, cheer-up-mate-my-uncle-lost-a-nut-in-a-card-door tales or any useless trivia to share?

Webmonkey

I hate Computers :mad:

pickarooney

1. Can I make a bootable win2k disk from a non-bootable one (with xroast and a piece of sellotape if it must)

2. Can I work around the broken cluster or is it goodnight Irene?

3. can I avoid having to wipe the mbr every time i want to try format the 40Gb drive and install windows, and then having to reinstall Linux to get back online and ask more annoying questions?

pickarooney

And the machine is running so slooooooooowly, can't surf and listen to mp3s at one time.
Droid rot. don't you just love it.

pickarooney

So I took out the 40Gb drive and brought it to work. Stuck it into a test machine and booted with a Partition Magic boot disk. No apaprent problem with the hard drive, I wiped it, and made a 12Gb NTFS partition, leaving the rest empty.
Brought it home, along with a Win2k bootable CD. Unplugged the 80Gb drive and booted from the Win2k CD. Setup started off straight away and went about its business, asking me where to install Win2k (12Gb partition just for that, thanks) gets to the end of the initial install and tells me it's going to reboot. Which it does, from the CD. Installation procedure starts up again, exactly as before, with the same result, reboots at the end and then starts installing again. I tried rebooting with no CD and got a message saying I had an invalid boot partition. Booted to floppy and fdisk /mbr. Start the installation procedure again, and just as before it installs in an endless loop.
Back in with the other HD and restore the Linux installation.
Went to listen to some music to soothe the nerves, and discovered that only about 10% of the mp3s had copied across, all the rest are lost for aye.
Probably just stay with Linux then as soon as I can get it running stably and not crashing all over the show.

Webmonkey

You should make your own journal on boards