Linux ate my HD!

[rgustin]

I have Red Hat 6.2 installed on a 20 GB Quantum Fireball HD, but lately I'm having huge problems with it. For one, my BIOS seems reluctant to show the drive, so when it first posts, it won't recognize the drive. Very occasionally, it will recognize it, but then can't boot off it. I then tried to boot off a Red Hat floppy boot disk, but when it goes to check the hard drive, instead of showing "Quantum Fireball" in the drive id part, it says "UUENTUE FIVEFADLT", which looks suspiciously like a garbled version of what it's supposed to be. I'm more than a little frustrated. The kicker here is that this is a system that I've used before. As of yesterday morning it would boot into Linux with no troubles. Does this sound like a BIOS problem, or with the Hard Drive? I felt it was more likely to be with the hard drive, because I have another, with Windows 2K on it, that won't get recognized either. However, if that's the case, I don't know how to fix it.
Any help would, as usual, be greatly appreciated.
-Rg

[Statica]

Hi rgustin:
Sounds to me that the Quantum isnt very healthy. Especially if the BIOS is having difficulty with it.

is it S.M.A.R.T. capable? have u tried downloading the QDPS software for diagnosing it .. should be on the website
http://service.quantum.com/softsource/disk_docs/qdps_ontrack_info.htm

I've heard of Quantum inconsistencies with certain Award bios'

HTH

[rgustin]

I just tried, and it won't recognize the drive as a Quantum Fireball, because the information the drive spits out is the above-mantioned garbled string. Apparently it won't even run the diagnostic unless it recognizes a Quantum drive. Good idea, though, I didn't know about that utility. Any other ideas?

[Statica]

And that to me is very crazy .. cos it shouldnt even be bothered with anything beyond BIOS level information.

How about trying a Linux version of S.M.A.R.T. ..
http://csl.cse.ucsc.edu/software/smart/

UCSC-Smart is very good, and so is Smart Pro [the link should be at the bottom of that page]

HTH.

As usual, I(we) would appreciate followups .. you never know when I might be faced with a Quantum [gak!!] too