Jeff Vian wrote:
Repartition the drive --- force it to do that.
check your bios settings for the hard drive support.
Confirm the drive parameters are correct, the controller is set correctly, and possibly the s.m.a.r.t. setting for the hard drive. Also check to see if lba is enabled or not. Sometimes things that work perfectly (or faults are munged/ hidden) will not work under linux.
Using fdisk at the command line allows you to set/display the partition type. 83 for default linux, 82 for swap. Is that set correctly for the filesystem you are using?
If you boot to knoppix, can you see the drive correctly? and can you mount it on another running system (knoppix works for this)?
What size drive is it.? mke2fs allows you to do a bad block check during format, as does e2fsck. Try that as well.
As far as i can see, the bios (AMIBIOS 07/12/2001) settings are ok, using HD autodetect. The controller is set to support both IDE ports. S.M.A.R.T. enabled/disabled doesn't make a different behavior. LBA is enabled.
The partition types are ok. I checked for bad blocks - nothing. The drive size is 30G, but i use a 100M boot partition, which is far below the 1024 cylinder limit.
Under the linux rescue system from the installation CDs i downloaded, i can create the partitions, make the ext2 filesystems, label them (/boot, /), check them with e2fsck, and mount them. Everything looks fine to me. When i simply reboot into the rescue system and don't do anything else, and then run e2fsck, i get the message
invalid argument while trying to open <device>
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 file system
The same when i try any of the superblock backups. I then can't mount these partitions any more (invalid argument). The partition table, however, is readable for fdisk, and looks the same.
I'm trying to get a diagnostic tool from the hd manufactorer, and i'll download knoppix for a try. The HD, by the way, is a Samsung SV 3063H.
I find that pretty strange.
Thanks for your help
