Re: Reformatting hard disk.
- From: anton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Anton Ertl)
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:54:26 GMT
"john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
After various experiments, including an attempt to install Windows
2000 (it failed) I can no longer boot from /dev/hda. I have
reassigned /dev/hdb as my hard drive boot device in the bios.
Now I want to do a low level format on /dev/hda and start all over.
No need for a low-level format.
I
have already tried the trick of using a DOS fdisk from a floppy to
zero out the MBR:
A: fdisk /mbr
That may have made things worse, I don't know.
You should also be able to use one of the Linux partition tools to
repartition the drive.
There is a dd command that will zero out the mbr first block but I
forget what the exact string is.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=64k count=1
should be sufficient.
Actually the partition table has never been a problem in my
experience, but sometimes I have had to erase the start of the
partition (because, e.g., the md driver would ignore the partition
type and just grab the partition). You can do that with a similar
command, but use the partition device instead of /dev/hda).
When I try to use it in a normal manner as the boot device LILO givesme an L followed by
series of 99 99 99 etc.
My guess is that you have the first stage of LILO in the MBR, but the
rest has been overwritten. Just reinstalling LILO (maybe after
installing a Linux distro) should fix that.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
.
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