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I accidentally booted into the Windows recovery partition which gave me an option to quit or continue to wipe the disk. I selected the option to quit but an onscreen message said initialising (which I thought was odd, since I expected it to just reboot when I selected quit). After a few minutes I cut the power to prevent it from overriding my hdd.

When I rebooted I got the grub rescue prompt but after using ls it turns out that every partition has msdos in the name, I..e hd0,msdos1. Then I tried my liveUSB but kept getting a kernel panic message saying out of memory (I have 2G of RAM so shouldn't be a problem). Finally I decided to remove the hdd. Now I can boot with my liveUSB but whenever I connect the hdd (using a SATA enclosure) it takes the entire OS down.

Any idea how I can inspect the hdd without it freezing the OS? I'm out of ideas!

  • With the hard drive removed and booting with a liveUSB from an SD card I can load ubuntu but as soon as I connect the hard drive (externally via USB using the enclosure) it causes ubuntu to crash. it also causes the same effect on another machine that's running fedora

  • The CPU and/memory usage sky-rockets until the pc OS becomes unresponsive (even when the drive is removed). The logs are a good idea, I didnt check because I'm using the liveUSB with no persistent storage (so the logs disappear when I hit the power button to reset the machine). However you gave me an idea and I've checked the messages log on the fedora machine. The last entry says "attached SCSI disk" which doesn't give much away but just before that it lists sdb1, sdb2 all the way through to sdb255... I've not seen that before.

  • So far its crashed both Linux computers that I've connected to. Windows does not cause a crash and detects that the drive is connected but fails to mount it. A pc repair shop will be too expensive. There must be a way to stop Linux from entering the continuous loop (which is what I assume is using all of the memory) when the hdd is plugged in?

Ste
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  • If you can not boot with the drive connected you are sort of stuck. I would advise you try to find one of usb external hard drive enclosure, boot, and then plug in the drive. Perhaps someone at you LoCo or LUG, or perhaps a friendly repair shop (you do support your local shoppe ?). Then try testdisk. – Panther Dec 10 '11 at 00:03
  • Hi, I have bought an external hd enclosure today. With the hard drive removed and booting with a liveUSB from an SD card I can load ubuntu but as soon as I connect the hard drive (externally via USB using the enclosure) it causes ubuntu to crash. it also causes the same effect on another machine that's running fedora – Ste Dec 10 '11 at 00:14
  • Crash in what way ? Just wondering if you can ssh in and check the logs. – Panther Dec 10 '11 at 00:17
  • The CPU and/memory usage sky-rockets until the pc OS becomes unresponsive (even when the drive is removed). The logs are a good idea, I didnt check because I'm using the liveUSB with no persistent storage (so the logs disappear when I hit the power button to reset the machine). However you gave me an idea and I've checked the messages log on the fedora machine. The last entry says "attached SCSI disk" which doesn't give much away but just before that it lists sdb1, sdb2 all the way through to sdb255... I've not seen that before. – Ste Dec 10 '11 at 00:41
  • Think you got a messed up HD here (sdb255 is i believe the limit por partitions so..), might as well format it and be careful the next time. – Uri Herrera Dec 10 '11 at 04:24
  • Yes, I think you are right and the formatting is what's causing the memory to lock up. It's trying to process a huge amount of sdbs. Formatting would be a last resort since I would lose all the data and have no backup but supposing I took that option, how would I format without connecting it to my laptop? As soon as it is connected the whole system goes down in under 4 seconds. – Ste Dec 10 '11 at 14:31
  • I suggest you format it with a friends computer if yours don't work, or in any case take it to a pc shop. – Uri Herrera Dec 10 '11 at 21:51
  • So far its crashed both computers that I've connected it to, my friends aren't very technical and will not appreciate me plugging a faulty hard drive into their pc. I'm thinking of trying to connect it to window rather than Linux, assuming I can find my old xp installation cd. A pc repair shop will be too expensive. There must be a way to stop Linux from entering the continuous loop (which is what I assume is using all of the memory) when the hdd is plugged in? – Ste Dec 11 '11 at 02:58
  • Perhaps, i didn't think of it before, the drive has too much faulty sectors and that's why the kernel keeps crashing. – Uri Herrera Dec 11 '11 at 03:01
  • Yes its possible but data is often recovered from faulty hard drives. I assume that professionals in data recovery would use a Unix-like system so would they connect the hard drive without causing a kernel panic? There must be some settings that will allow me to mount without crashing ubuntu. I've searched the internet but can't see any solution. – Ste Dec 11 '11 at 20:46
  • Ok I managed to connect it to a Windows pc and it didn't crash, however Windows was unable to detect the hard drive. Since doing that I am able to connect it to ubuntu and fedora without it causing a kernel panic... I assume when Windows try to access it something must have changed. Now I need to try and recover the data but the disk isnt showing up in nautilus. – Ste Dec 12 '11 at 02:27
  • Update: Tried to connect it to Linux again today but it is still causing a kernel panic so back to square one. – Ste Dec 12 '11 at 14:52

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Sorted! When the hard drive was connected to linux it would take down the system by causing a kernel panic. However it took a few seconds before the system stopped responding so I used a partitioning program on fedora to erase the mbr in those few seconds. Once the mbr was deleted I could connect it externally without it causing a system failure and then use other tool to recover data and reformat the hdd.

Ste
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