arup@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Arup Mukherjee) (08/21/87)
My apologies to all people who are reading this message for the second time; The first post had the wrong distribution, and I need help rather desperately : I recently bought a 20 meg Seagate ST 225 from someone who had been using it without any problems in a DEC rainbow. In addition, he included a controller that had supposedly been working ok in an XT. Unfortunately, both had been unused for a few months when I got them, if it matters. My problem is that after the low level format completes with no errors (I tried with 3 different controllers, just to be sure), fdisk invariably comes up with the message "error reading from fixed disk". I have tried all sorts of things like new cable. etc, just in case. My questions are essentially : [1] Does this sound like a dead hard disk to all the hardware gurus out there? [2] If the hard disk is actually dead, why does it get through the low level format without any problems? Also....the ibm advanced diagnostics format the disk without any problem, but the seek test fails with the resulting error 1704 S. I would greatly appreciate any help offered. ============================================================================== Arup Mukherjee arup@grasp.cis.upenn.edu ==============================================================================
enchant@oliveb.UUCP (Dan Crocker) (08/21/87)
In article <1823@super.upenn.edu>, arup@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Arup Mukherjee) writes: > different controllers, just to be sure), fdisk invariably comes up with the > message "error reading from fixed disk". I have tried all sorts of things like If the disk has developed a media defect on the first few cylinders, I think fdisk will give you this message. In this case, you cannot use the disk ] because dos cannot handle bad sectors in the first few tracks. You can use debug (or another program) to read all the sectors of the first cylinders to see if they are readable. I suspect at least one of them is not. Good luck. dan -- Here comes the supernatural anesthetist If he wants you to snuff it All he has to do is puff it He's such a fine dancer