Did I fry my hard drive?

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Asus a7v600
AMD 2500+ XP
Kingston 512 PC2700
Seagate 80G 7200 RPM ATA drive

In Linux, I tried to create a new partition and move my /usr over there and like a dummy, I never do it right and I lose all my stuff. So, I decided to try

dd if=/dev/hda8 of=/dev/hda1

and it hung up. So, I had to power off. Well, since I had lost the stuff in /usr, it wouldn't boot. I went to try to reinstall and it gets to the point of formatting and then I get 3 quick BIOS beeps and it freezes. The HD activity light is still on, but the screen is frozen. I wait as for way longer than it should take to format the partition and the HD light is still on and the screen is still frozen. So, I power off again. I put in the Win2K disk and delete all the partitions and fomat the whole drive and reinstall Windows....no problems there. So, I put the mdk9.1 Linux disk back in and it gets to installing 'time' and I get the 3 beeps again and freeze. Tried two more times with different partition sizes and still get the 3 beeps and a freeze, mostly during install of packages. Not the same time frame. So, I whip out my Seagate disk and try to zero out the whole drive. It says 'writing' for a certain length of time and then the 3 ominous beeps and freeze (the progress bar has not moved yet). So, I reinstall Win2K again. Again no problems. I try to reinstall 9.1 and I get the 3 beeps some time during the package install process. I've searched the web and can find no meaning of just 3 short beeps. 1 long followed by 3 short is supposed to be a problem with video card and can't print error to screen. Any ideas? The HD is only about 6 months old and the rest of the hardware is only about 2-3 months old. I downloaded the latest Mandrake 9.2 and burnt the CDs and I get the same problems with installation.

[glc]

If the hard drive is not damaged, it's most likely flaky ram. If you have a different stick to try, do it and try to zero the drive out again, run the diags first to see if this is an option. If it's overclocked, return it to stock settings or even underclock it and see what happens.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Thanks for the tips. I am definitely not a hardware person...I'm more of a software guy. I do not have another stick of RAM to test or another MoBo to test this stick on. I have a question that may steer the diagnosis. I set the BIOS to 'Halt on all errors except disk errors' and I tried to reinstall Linux. I still got the 3 beeps and a freeze, but the system did not reboot or halt. Does that mean it is definitely a disk error? Does that mean it still could be the IDE controller?

As soon as the house is empty, I'm going to take this disk and put it in the other computer here and try to install on it. I will then take the spare drive from the other computer and try to install Linux on it on this box. Any other thoughts? Should I still not rule out RAM?

I removed all overclocking while testing and troubleshooting.

[glc]

I think you need to try to run the diagnostics from Seagate, whatever you have to do to make that happen, to make sure the drive is not damaged, before you even think of trying to install on it again.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Boy, do I feel stupid.

It turns out that when I thought the system had frozen, it had not and the three short beeps were the system going into PowerSaving Mode, because I had set power management in the BIOS to maximum savings. Stupidstupidstupid.

Sorry to bother y'all with this.

[glc]

No bother, we ALL just learned something!

A suggestion - don't use the bios for power management except on a laptop - use OS power management.