[Herefordshire] Re: Laptop HD Replacement

[Chris Owens]

Hi Andrew and Matt

    I guess I was lucky in getting a big disk fully seen by my 2001 machine
but the pre-purchase research warnings seemed to refer to processors that
were older than mine so I took the chance.  I have been trying to get some
of these messages back for posting in case they are of help to others.

    As for Matt's suggestions: well after breaking the handle off the coal
hammer I felt very happy but must have hit the right place at some stage
because the machine now dual boots correctly 80-90% of the time and option 3
is not required (yet). The problem wasn't with jumpers which were set as per
the old disk (for the HD to be Primary Master) it is in fact hardware
related and it's intermittent, variable and unpredictable nature (possibly
temperature related) in retrospect were clues. Hi-Grade identified the
problem straight away as a fault on the I/O board possibly a loose connector
or failing component near-by. Courtesy of Box's excellent suggestion of a
foam rubber pad trapped between the case and the connector to maintain some
pressure the machine now goes at least for the time being.

    Thanks to everyone's help I now have a new Hard Drive which in
retrospect now clearly wasn't the original cause of the boot bother. Missed
clues here was that the disk was breaking up well into the Data Area with
the System Area quite intact and the failure to boot was highly variable
from hour to hour and went on for weeks as the disk was breaking up.

    I have Mandrake 10.0 up and running again so can carry on fumbling
around with what I think is a tremendous project. However in the meantime
I'm not sure whether a distillation of my experiences and progress as a
beginner installing a Hard Drive into a Laptop might be worth a posting or
not.

    Now the next thing. Question for today: If you install a second Linux
Flavour (say Ubuntu) does it over write the resident form (say Mandrake) or
exist quite separately alongside it or exist alongside and share things like
the kernel etc.

Thanks again

Chris   O (Tenbury)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew at hodgsonfamily.org>
To: "Matt Stone" <stone.matthew at gmail.com>; "Herefordshire Linux Users
Group." <herefordshire at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 8:58 AM
Subject: RE: [Herefordshire] Re: Laptop HD Replacement


Hi,

We saw the laptop yesterday and Box looked at it - IIRC there were no
jumpers on the drive.  I was amazed though it even saw such a large drive
given the age of the machine!

Thanks.
Andrew.


-----Original Message-----
From: herefordshire-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk on behalf of Matt Stone
Sent: Thu 21/04/2005 17:23
To: Herefordshire Linux Users Group.
Subject: Re: [Herefordshire] Re: Laptop HD Replacement

You could try this:

1: Hit laptop with a hammer
2: Repeat step 1 until happy
3: Buy new laptop
:)

On a more serious note have you checked the jumper settings?

Cheerts
Matt


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Owens" <cowens at clara.co.uk>
To: "LUG Posting" <herefordshire at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 10:46 AM
Subject: [Herefordshire] Re: Laptop HD Replacement


> . Has anyone any other ideas.
>


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