[COLUG] Is the drive dead or not?

[Brian Miller]

On Wednesday 06 December 2006 12:42 pm, Kent Broestl wrote:
> After a very hard reboot (my son _kicked_ the computer), one of my
> drives is now inaccessible. (Q: Head crash?)
>
> mount /dev/hdf1 /storage
> /dev/hdf1 already mounted or /storage busy
>
> lsof | grep storage gives me not much (only files mounted under /usr...
> different drive)
>
> ps aux doesn't tell me much either (only samba should hit the /storage
> and that process is stopped)
>
> During the boot process, I am also warned that the drive is already
> mounted/busy.
>
> I thought about fsck on the drive, but am warned that fsck on a mounted
> partition is bad.
> Q: What am I missing?
> Q: How bad is it to fsck a mounted drive?
> Q: Is the drive just dead and should I just give up?
>
> Any and all advice is welcome. Thanks!
>
> Kent Broestl
>
What does the BIOS tell you when you boot up?  Does the system see the hard 
drive?   Some newer systems have a drive check feature built into the BIOS.  
If your system offers that, you might try running the hardware check on the 
disk.

Are there any lights on or associated with the disk?  What happens to those 
lights when you issue the u/mount commands?