can I use a damaged drive? + diagnosing problems from pxe boot

[Matt Price]

Hi folks,

this is the next in what's turning into a series of posts stemming from
an install attempt on a problematic laptop.  This is a compaq TC1100
which had some kind of serious undiagnosed problem when the last user
ran windows on it.  There's no cd and it doesn't seem to want to boot
from usb, so pxe seems to be the only way to boot the thing.  I've
gotten pretty far into the process that way using ubuntu's netboot
procedure but that died with a bunch of hardware errors:  (approximate,
can't type from machine):

end_request: I/O error, dev hda, secot 4456449
EXT4-fs error: read_block_bitmap: cannot read block bitmap
block_group=17, block_bitmap=557056
Aborting journal on device hda1
ext3_abort called
extr-fs error:  ext3_journal_start_sb: detected aborted journal.  
Remounting fs read-only
Journal has aborted

subsequent fsck's and badblock commands generate further errors; fsck
"can't read superblock" and badblocks stalls at block 28480 of 57833999
(ok, actually I see it is continuing a bit past there, but with multiple
"dma timeout error's" -- status=0x58 and 0x59, driveReady SeekComplete
DataRequest, and also 0x40 "UncorrectableError).  
-----
so,, first question:  is this proof positive that the HD is bad?  Can I
work with a damaged disk or is that simply foolishness?

now as it happens this model uses a super-thin hd and they're pretty
expensive.  If the disk is bad, I'd like to check whether the rest of
the system is in good shape before I invest in a new disk.  So I'd like
to run some kind of diagnostics off of a live cd, but I don't have a
cd-drive...  So I was wondering if anyone knew of tricks for running
live cd's via pxe boot.  Also if you had suggestions for which cd's
offer the best hardware diagnostic tools (something I don't know much
about.  

thanks as always,

matt

-- 
Matt Price
History Dept
University of Toronto
matt.price-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
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