25 replies to this topic

[StankDawg]

you know, funny, it sounds like I am having a similar problem myself. Windows XP runs fine on my box, and so does knoppix booted from CD (RAMDISK). But when I tried installing Mandrake 9.0 or 9.1 It dies with an "error writing to hard drive". I even tried an older Redhat 7.2 install and got a similar error. It happens everytime on the file copy process. The hardware detection works fine.

I thought it might be the MBR left over from windows, but I wiped that out and still get the error. I chalked it up to a dead/dying hard drive. Now I am wondering if there is a kernel bug.

ok, so i tried redhat 9 install and it also died on my machine. so i pulled otu the winXP CD and tried to see if ti would install again. I figured it would die also, because the HD must be going...

NOPE! It installed fine...i partictioned and reformatted again with redhat and tried another install, and it STILL WONT WORK! I don't know what else could be happening.

[ChZ]

Could be your ide chipset

[twirlz]

you know, funny, it sounds like I am having a similar problem myself.  Windows XP runs fine on my box, and so does knoppix booted from CD (RAMDISK).  But when I tried installing Mandrake 9.0 or 9.1 It dies with an "error writing to hard drive".  I even tried an older Redhat 7.2 install and got a similar error.  It happens everytime on the file copy process.  The hardware detection works fine.

I thought it might be the MBR left over from windows, but I wiped that out and still get the error.  I chalked it up to a dead/dying hard drive.  Now I am wondering if there is a kernel bug.

ok, so i tried redhat 9 install and it also died on my machine. so i pulled otu the winXP CD and tried to see if ti would install again. I figured it would die also, because the HD must be going...

NOPE! It installed fine...i partictioned and reformatted again with redhat and tried another install, and it STILL WONT WORK! I don't know what else could be happening.

i found out that my problem was bad sectors on the hdd. aparently windows doesn't care to much if you have them or not.

[StankDawg]

i found out that my problem was bad sectors on the hdd. aparently windows doesn't care to much if you have them or not.

yeah, i thought about that but how can I confirm? does linux not have a way of marking bad sectors/tracks?

[feend]

Stank: I've never had a disk with bad blocks *knocks on wood* but I think every distribution i've tried (except for maybe the bottom up from source distros) prompts for bad block checking when you create a new partition. I can say for a fact that Debian does this. Is RedHat the only distribution you've tried? Get yourself a Debian woody cd .

[StankDawg]

Stank: I've never had a disk with bad blocks *knocks on wood* but I think every distribution i've tried (except for maybe the bottom up from source distros) prompts for bad block checking when you create a new partition. I can say for a fact that Debian does this. Is RedHat the only distribution you've tried? Get yourself a Debian woody cd .

i tried 2 version of redhat, 2 versions of mandrake, and 1 version of knoppix. all failed.