opensuse 13.2 ruined two hdd's

English Hardware
1

while trying to put opensuse 13.2 dvd from linux magazine on an athlon 64. both drives are ide.

the first never made it completely through install. it is recognized at bios, i can make a partition, but it wont mount in linux or be readable by dos or windows.

the second made it completely through install worked great! for about a week. i had clicked the update button and then it would not boot anymore. i reinstalled it and that worked until i tried to reboot (i had put the root/boot on a logical drive). i removed the previous partitions ntfs, swap, root, home, intending to ditch the windows os and go pure linux. installed one last time, ran good for about 2 days, then the xfs home stopped working while i was in x. emergency mode on reboot. i ran xfs_repair and home was up again. it failed again and i could only startx with root. ran xfs_repair again and it worked for about ten minutes then home and root were inaccessable. cant reboot because the firmware on the hdd is broken now. i read about the drives and it seems that resizing or moving partitions can ruin the firmware.

2

On Sun 15 Mar 2015 11:46:01 PM CDT, x86timothy wrote:

while trying to put opensuse 13.2 dvd from linux magazine on an athlon
64. both drives are ide.

the first never made it completely through install. it is recognized at
bios, i can make a partition, but it wont mount in linux or be readable
by dos or windows.

the second made it completely through install worked great! for about a
week. i had clicked the update button and then it would not boot
anymore. i reinstalled it and that worked until i tried to reboot (i had
put the root/boot on a logical drive). i removed the previous partitions
ntfs, swap, root, home, intending to ditch the windows os and go pure
linux. installed one last time, ran good for about 2 days, then the xfs
home stopped working while i was in x. emergency mode on reboot. i ran
xfs_repair and home was up again. it failed again and i could only
startx with root. ran xfs_repair again and it worked for about ten
minutes then home and root were inaccessable. cant reboot because the
firmware on the hdd is broken now. i read about the drives and it seems
that resizing or moving partitions can ruin the firmware.

Hi
Maybe you mean the mbr, firmware…I very much doubt that considering
the drives I have used and re-partitioning done, but I guess anything
is possible…

Best to fire up the rescue system from the install media and then check
the drives with smartctl command, eg;


smartctl -a /dev/sda

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.36-38-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

3

Not possible. Think you need to read again.:wink:

I have resized and moved partitions on multi-thousands of drives over the decades, that has never happened once.

Give us the full identity of the drives: Make, Model, Serial #, Size, etc.

Give us the exact failure messages you were getting at the different times you had problems.

Check your drives, as suggested in the above post.

Check your IDE controller.

Check your cables and your connections.

4

If you want to use openSUSE for normal desktop use and want to format your partitions with the EXT4 filesystem all you have to do is make the /root, swap and /home partitions primary, not logical, that’s a mistake, OTOH if you want to format your /root partition with XFS filesystem is advisable that you make a separate /boot partition with EXT2, EXT3 or EXT4 filesystem to install the boot loader on it because there’s a GRUB version that is not compatible with XFS, or install the boot loader on the MBR of the hdd that should be /dev/sda.

5

If you want to use openSUSE for normal desktop use, all you have to do is make the /root, swap and /home partitions primary, not logical, that’s a mistake, OTOH if you want to format your /root partition with XFS filesystem is advisable that you make a separate /boot partition with EXT2, EXT3 or EXT4 to install the boot loader on it because there’s a GRUB version that is not compatible with XFS, or install the boot loader on the MBR of the hdd that should be /dev/sda.

6

That is not true, logical is just fine. Primary might be preferential in most circumstances, but it is not essential.

It is also a myth that openSUSE cannot boot to a logical partition. I have several machines doing just that: Grub2 is installed in the root partition, and that root partition is marked with the Boot (aka Active) flag, generic MBR. The only problem with such a layout is when Grub is installed to the Extended partition instead of to a Logical partition within the Extended partition. In the latter case, it can be hit or miss whether it works.

Also, if you opt to use GPT partitioning, you do not need to worry about the distinctions between primary and logical partitions.

OTOH if you want to format your /root partition with XFS filesystem is advisable that you make a separate /boot partition with EXT2, EXT3 or EXT4 filesystem to install the boot loader on it because there’s a GRUB version that is not compatible with XFS, or install the boot loader on the MBR of the hdd that should be /dev/sda.

This information is also not all that correct. I am going to guess that you are actually referring to the BTRFS filesystem, rather than XFS.

7

Completely bizarre IMO.
Quite literally I couldn’t tell you how many HDD’s I have carved up every which way and not one issue, ever.
More likely your old IDE HDD’s were on the way out

8

I will be a little more blunt than my fellows… Nonsense, Impossible!

That’s based on both personal experience with over 14,000 drives of all sorts, sizes and brands, and 20 years of interacting with various drive manufacturers, some of whom were my customers, and with the engineers who designed many of the drives.

There are many ways to screw up one’s firmware, but very, very few involve user input from the keyboard, and none involve either partitioning or installation of openSUSE or any other OS.

9

No, it really can’t.

Resizing partitions or destroying/recreating them doesn’t even remotely touch the firmware of a HDD nor can you simply ‘ruin it’. I’m just going to be blunt here and say it’s completely fabricated bull that has absolutely no basis on reality and is on line with the little grey men in Roswell.

10

time to download a new install iso file and burn in to DVD or Thumb?

… worked great! for about a week… …i reinstalled it and that worked until… …installed one last time, ran good for about 2 days… …i ran xfs_repair and home was up again… …and it worked for about ten minutes then…

Sounds like the drives consistently worked. I also note that the software only failed after user intervention.

Very sound advice. If you follow it there’s a very good chance you’ll get some good advice from the many talented contributors to this forum.

11

1st hdd
seagate medalist st38641a s/n gr594605 8,455 mb
part#9k2001_31 firmware 3.15 lot#ea2324 configuration level cmw01

every install i used ext4 as root xfs as home

i had 3 spare drives 8.5 ,5.1, 4 gig apiece. the 8.5 had a working winxp/os. the5.1 (samsung)was just space. the 4 (bigfoot) had a corrupt win98/os. i was trying to use one hdd as swap/ root and one other as home. (error -3030) i think? for the installer to partition, i think it needed to be master not slave. then it would install some packages and fail. i tried 8.5&5.1 no go ,8.5&4 no go, 5.1&4 no go5.1&8.5 no go 4&8.5 nogo. the 5.1 and the 4 are just fine.

the 8.5
smartctl says
299.09807 program smartctl is using depricated scsi ioctl, please convert it to sg_io
299.104742 same
299.111581 same
failed

12

Those drives are ancient by any standard. They might have been damaged by wear and tear over the years or even by poor handling / static discharge.

13

This is what I believe, also.

14

Download the Diagnostics from Seagate, they are free. These will run on Seagate drives.

If you have other makes, such as WD, download their diagnostics from the manufacturer.

… but, judging from the age of these devices, I would be quite convinced they are failing due to age and wear-and-tear.

Just be pleased you got this many decades of use out of them, because that is very unlikely to happen with the newer drives.

15

8.5 is pretty much a extreme minimal size for a working full featured OS these days even if limited to root. Not to mention the 8.5 gig is like a stone-age device. It is a true wonder it even spins up

You can’t even run smartctrl on it since I’m sure it predates smart on HD

16

And this is the primary problem: The drive is too small for an openSUSE install, and so it fails, even if the drive is good.

17

with a partition size of 10GB for /,
out of memory sometimes occured

HDD requirements?
>7GB is needed for a standard DVD install, them
+2GB for temperary system files etc.

for each additional kernel installed another 5GB is needed

YMMV

18

I have started “opensusing” from 11.1, and up to 12.2 the entire opensuse was on logical partition (/root /boot /home /swap) and it just worked very well

19

2nd hdd 40gig

maxtor 4d040h2 dah017k0, s/n d20x0vye fd22a, ds/n sg-06j116-19661-1as-a2wf rev. a00
4d040h2220451 n,m,c,b

ntfs, swap, ext4 as root , xfs as home

after the update i think it was something about initrd?
with the logical partitions, something like cant mount / … setuid permission?
the last time i had removed my windows completely because i found my install disc.
this is about the time it went
wonky and would not let you navigate the hdd.
at reboot the hdd changed its name from
maxtor dah017k0
to-
maxtor romulus dah017kz
a quick search of hdd changed name tells me that the firmware wentbad.
i could try to flash it but i cant seem to find the right rom
I could try a similar rom but that may not work

20

Aaaaaaand I’m out.