Re: Hosed my system/fdisk can't read disk drive now.
John is 100% correct.
The one thing I would offer, based on my having
single-handedly screwed up probably 100 or more
installs, is that you should walk away from it for a
day or so if you can afford to. Try hard to force
yourself to stay away from the box for at least 24
hours.
Every time I had something like this happen and I
waited, I usually realized later on that there was
something else that I did that was causing the
problem, (ex. a hardware setting in the BIOS that got
changed at the same time as the other change I made
that was the original suspect).
Also, cfdisk is a powerful partitioning tool, but I
believe that the documentation also includes the
disclaimer that it is not a good I idea to substitute
it (esp. the filesystem) for the partitioning tools
that come with the OS you are trying to install.
At any rate, I have made thousands of mistakes
installing Linux and have never permanently damaged my
box. If I can help, let me know.
Good luck,
Eric
--- John Pearson <huiac@camtech.net.au> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 03:03:52PM -0600, ktb wrote
> > kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 10:03:13AM -0600, ktb
> wrote:
> > > > "Allan M. Wind" wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On 2000-02-24 09:40:21, ktb wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > I've pulled a real bone head deal it
> seems. I decided to partition the
> > > > > > HD on my new system so that I could put
> both Windows 98 and Slink on
> > > > > > it. I tried using fdisk under "dos" but
> it wouldn't let me delete the
> > > > > > current partition so I used the Slink
> installation disk and cfdisk to
> > > > > > partition my HD. I cut the disk in half
> and added one partition "Win95
> > > > > > FAT32 (LBA)" which was what it was before
> except that it took up the
> > > > > > whole disk. I marked it as bootable. I
> then attempted to install W98
> > > > > > and got the message "no HD found." I went
> into the bios setup and the
> > > > > > disk can't be detected. I switched it to
> "auto" but no improvement. I
> > > > > > used the Slink installation cd again and
> found I get the message "FATAL
> > > > > > ERROR: Cannot read disk drive Press any
> key to exit fdisk." I have no
> > > > > > installation disks for this HD. It is the
> HD that came with the
> > > > > > system. What the heck do I do now?
> > > > >
> > > > > You did use something to resize that win98
> partition with besides
> > > > > cfdisk, right?
> > > >
> > > > No I didn't.
> > >
> > > Ouch.
> > >
> > > Did you have anything on the disk initially, or
> not? The way I read
> > > your post (portions deleted), you didn't.
> >
> > I had stuff on the disk but I meant to wipe it
> clean. What my problem
> > seems to be coming down to is my computer will no
> longer auto detect my
> > HD's. I had one HD (primary) with Windows 98 and
> (secondary) with
> > Slink. Now neither of my HD's are detected. I
> went into the bios
> > settings and selected "drive auto detect" and it
> shows nothing is
> > there. I manually set them to "auto" and still
> nothing is seen. I just
> > don't understand how creating a new partition
> valid in the eyes of
> > windows or not prevents my bios from detecting
> that there are HD's
> > there?
>
> It won't. If the BIOS doesn't see your drive then
> you need to fix
> that before any fdisk or partition-recovery software
> can work on it.
>
> Likely culprits are incorrect jumpers, missing power
> cables, and
> bad or misfitted ribbon cables.
>
> If you've had your case open, re-check that all your
> cables are
> seated correctly and verify that you don't have any
> that are
> "off-by-one-row-of-pins". Verify that the problem
> drive and any
> others on the same cable have power cables
> connected, and all
> pins are correctly seated (some drives will operate
> after a
> fashion with no power cable, presumably running off
> power sucked
> through the ribbon cable; sometimes when you insert
> a power
> cable the pin on the drive pushes its mate out of
> the power
> connector shell, rather than seating itself
> comfortably in the
> socket). If you have a spare ribbon cable, try
> replacing the one
> you're using now (if all else fails, get a known
> good one and do
> that anyway).
>
> If you've re-cabled or re-installed your drives,
> verify the
> jumper settings and try using the problem drive as a
> single
> master: some drives have problems acting as the
> master for some
> slaves, and vice versa.
>
> HTH,
>
>
> John P.
> --
> huiac@camtech.net.au
> john@huiac.apana.org.au
> "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything."
> - Bill Gates in Denmark
>
>
> --
> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe
> debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
>
>
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