Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!njsmu!mccc!shevett
From: shevett@mccc.uucp (dave shevett)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general
Subject: Unix-PC HD flakey as all get out
Message-ID: <1989Sep5.163304.12673@mccc.uucp>
Date: 5 Sep 89 16:33:04 GMT
Reply-To: shevett@mccc.UUCP (Dave Shevett)
Distribution: na
Organization: MCCC
Lines: 27

Grumble, grr growl - Remember a while back when John Hood mentioned a HD
problem?  Well, that was my hd that went out.  We reformatted and piled all
45 meg or so back on, and now I got another problem.

Symptoms: At poweron, the ol 'Main board P3..P5' comes up just fine, BUT,
just after that, the drive makes a sound like HALF a calibration.  The head
sounds like it homes, but does not return to the original track.  I've
NEVER heard that happen.  Anyway, I start figuring a bad sector right in th
the kernel, so I bring up my floppy system, and take a look at the HD.  I
can read everything, run things, etc - BUT - 'df' reports something like
11875 blocks, 0 i-nodes.  Great.  So I delete some files (rm rm rm rm rm)
and do another 'df'.  NOTHING happens (the # prompt returns).  I reboot,
using the floppies, and do a df again.  14772 blocks, 0 i-nodes.  (!!!!)

I figure the superblock is trashed, and I'd like to run an fsck on it,
forcing a rebuild of the freelist - HOW DO I DO IT?  I can't just do 
fsck -(cant remember option) /dev/fp002 - it says 'Mounted file system.
Ignored').  I can't umount it - don't have fsck on a workable floppy (I
think). 

I have TONS of stuff on this drive i need to get onto disk.  Misc info:

Upc, 1.5 meg RAM, Combo board, external 67meg Miniscribe HD (DEC RD53).


/------------\   /-----------------\   /---------------------\
 Dave Shevett	  shevett@mccc.UUCP     Mercer County College