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

[Jamon Camisso]

Matt Price wrote:
> 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.  

My suggestion would be to boot off a usb key. It looks like that unit is 
new enough.

Slax is a very nice <200mb pen drive distro that really comes in handy 
for such situations. There are also 2 other versions, one that will fit 
on a 64mb key iirc.

A quick Debian pen drive install:
http://d-i.pascal.at/

I haven't poked around, but http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ looks very 
useful too.

Jamon
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