I had what used to be an old NTFS hard drive. Something went wrong years ago with the drive, and it wouldn't boot into windows. I had an invalid windows key, all kinds of pirated software, and hardware issues with my video card.
I'm trying to revive the system, and have all the hardware working except the hard drive.
My motherboard recognizes it, and I've booted into Knoppix, which can't read it. Initially Knoppix saw 3 partitions on the drive, but didn't recognize any of them as NTFS. After some debugging in the BIOS settings, and rebooting back to Knoppix, the partitions seemed to disappear...
I don't care about recovering any data, I just want to use the disk to run Linux now.
I started with this tut: http://www.ehow.com/how_1000631_hard-drive-linux.html
I followed it almost exactly.
I initially did not sudo
into fdisk and got an error when using the w
command. I sudo fdisk /dev/sda
and had success:
sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 122504 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x083c083c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 625142447 312570200 83 Linux
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
Then, I got through step 17 of the ehow tut, and then got this output:
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ sudo mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda1
mke2fs 1.42.4 (12-Jun-2012)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
19537920 inodes, 78142550 blocks
3907127 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
2385 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
ext2fs_mkdir: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while creating root dir
Even though I got my terminal back, and can execute more commands, I can hear the hard drive clicking like crazy. It's been going on for about 10 minutes now... Could it still be formatting itself?
I don't see anything in HTOP that would indicate any Knoppix/HD CPU usage..
Knoppix seems to have lost the ability to communicate with the drive:
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
fdisk: unable to read /dev/sda: Input/output error
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda1
fdisk: unable to read /dev/sda1: Input/output error
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ sudo parted -l
Error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label
Warning: Unable to open /dev/fd0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/fd0
has been opened read-only.
Error: /dev/fd0: unrecognised disk label
Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0
has been opened read-only.
Error: /dev/sr0: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/zram0: unrecognised disk label
Warning: Unable to open /dev/cloop0 read-write (Read-only file system).
/dev/cloop0 has been opened read-only.
Error: /dev/cloop0: unrecognised disk label
What should I do?