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CharlesV wrote: ↑Sun Apr 20, 2025 10:55 am
Well... one of the things I really like about Western Digital drives... is also one of the most problematic things I have ever seen on hard drives - *many* WD's dont just die.. they fail slowly... and typically with spectacular results.
...
I am starting to think that j2mcgreg may be 100% correct on the drive giving out (or a part of it is bad - say the first part of FAT)
If it were me... the next thing I would do is to put in a new / different drive and test with that. ALL of what you are seeing very well could be that of a drive that has several poorly performing / bad sectors in the very worst spot.
It looks as if we are indeed looking at a failing hard drive. Probably not much point in wrestling further with investigative and diagnostic efforts....
So it looks like a simple choice: surgery or the skip. Either open up the case and start swapping out components and cables. Or consign the entire machine to the recycling centre. As the desktop is almost 20 years old, and has a feeble processor and minimal memory by today's standards, perhaps the latter is the more logical option?
I imagine a refurbished HDD might be easy and cheap to find online, so I might just explore that. But otherwise, I'm not sure the gain would be worth the pain (and time) involved.
Thanks to all who have contributed to this discussion. Even if we haven't solved the problem, it's been a voyage of discovery...
Michael O'Toole MX Linux facebook group moderator
Dell OptiPlex 7050 i7-7700, MX Linux 23 Xfce & Win 11 Pro
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Well, the story isn't over yet... and the search for a solution continues. So for @CharlesV, @j2mcgreg, @oops and others, this is the latest instalment.
As the general consensus seemed to be that the hard drive in the desktop was failing, I got a replacement hard drive: used, wiped and tested, guaranteed clean and good. To ensure compatibility, I got exactly the same make, model and spec as the original: a Western Digital 160GB WD1600BB-56RDA0.
Installed and freshly formatted, I ran a live session of MX21.3 from a CD/DVD. The live session was absolutely fine: everything worked as expected. So I installed MX21.3 on the "new" hard drive. I followed @CharlesV suggestion, and created a dedicated boot partition, as well as a swap partition and a partition for /rootMX. The installation proceeded and completed perfectly normally. So I rebooted.
Sadly, I got the same sequence of problems as described in my original post.
(Route 1) the initial launch screen, as before, lists Tab to view the POST screen, Del to enter the BIOS, and ESC to access the Boot menu. Leaving it to run brings up a black screen filled with text listing the devices and PCI etc, with a message at the bottom saying "Verifying DMI Pool Data ..." and a flashing cursor. After three or four minutes, up comes the dreaded and now familiar error message again: "Boot From CD: Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter."
So the first and obvious conclusion is that if the new and good HDD is producing the same result as the original HDD, then there was nothing wrong with that original hard drive.
(Route 2) from the initial splash screen, I chose Esc to get the boot order menu and chose the [MX] CD/DVD. From that MX launch screen menu list I chose the last option listed "Switch to Grub bootloader". As before, the screen displayed "Grub loading... Welcome to Grub"....and then on a new line "grub rescue>" and a flashing cursor. So no joy there.
(Route 3) again from the splash screen I chose again Esc and the MX CD/DVD. And this time from that MX Live session launch screen I chose the third option, "Boot from Hard Disk". Once again, I got the same sequence as described in my earlier posts: a screen with a message, repeated on two lines, consisting of a string of numbers and text saying something like "1234567xx: ata3: SRST failed (errno=-16)". And then after two or three minutes of clicking and whirring from the machine, the MX21.3 'Wildflower' launch menu appeared with the box to for my login password. In other words it had found and launched the MX21.3 which I had installed on the hard disk drive.
So what is the problem? Clearly the hard drive is fine. Clearly the CD/DVD drive works and enables a Live session. Clearly MX21.3 is properly installed, with its Grub, on the [replacement] hard drive.
The problem seems to be that the system is still not finding or recognising the Grub on that hard drive in the way it should, but is only [eventually] seeing it via the Route 3 described above, via the menu in the CD/DVD launch screen for the Live session, and after a couple of SRST (soft reset or system reset?) error pauses.
Is there an issue with the BIOS settings? Or some other glitch in the sequence of invisible actions which the system presumably goes through when booting up? What is triggering the "grub rescue" message? What is prompting the SRST process? Any advice, comments or insights would be welcome!
Last edited by br1anstorm on Thu Apr 24, 2025 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I got a replacement hard drive: used, wiped and tested, guaranteed clean and good. To ensure compatibility, I got exactly the same make, model and spec as the original: a Western Digital 160GB WD1600BB-56RDA0.
I think that your mistake was in duplicating the original model rather than using a different brand. Your method assumes that the defect in the original was unique rather than being series wide. Rather than taking that chance, I would have searched for the newest IDE drive I could find.
HP 15; ryzen 3 5300U APU; 500 Gb SSD; 8GB ram
HP 17; ryzen 3 3200; 500 GB SSD; 12 GB ram
Idea Center 3; 12 gen i5; 256 GB ssd;
In Linux, newer isn't always better. The best solution is the one that works.
I got a replacement hard drive: used, wiped and tested, guaranteed clean and good. To ensure compatibility, I got exactly the same make, model and spec as the original: a Western Digital 160GB WD1600BB-56RDA0.
I think that your mistake was in duplicating the original model rather than using a different brand. Your method assumes that the defect in the original was unique rather than being series wide. Rather than taking that chance, I would have searched for the newest IDE drive I could find.
Hmmm - very interesting point. When I browsed online for a replacement drive, there were obviously several makes and models to choose from (and they are not particularly expensive). I did look at another Western Digital model - WD1600BB-55RDAO, which is very similar. But one aspect had me rather puzzled - and led me to select a direct equivalent.
The specific HDD in my old machine, WD1600BB-56RDA0, is described as having a PATA interface (which it seems is slightly older and slower than SATA). The 55DRA0 for example is very similar but is listed as having a SATA interface. And various websites which I checked suggested that the two interfaces were different and had different connectors and sockets. Confusingly it turns out however that PATA and IDE are two different terms for the same thing.....! See for example this website https://askleo.com/whats_the_difference ... _and_ide/.
I therefore had to assume that I could not order any old (or new) 160GB HDD, but would have to get one which had the right connections/sockets to fit the cables and plugs inside the casing of this particular and rather elderly machine. Hence my choice.
Moreover we ought not to overlook the fact that - for the last decade or more, the HDD in this laptop worked totally reliably and well. That of itself rather undermines the assumption that there might be a series-wide flaw with this particular model of HDD.
Do I now go looking for a different brand or model - and if so what? The jungle of model names, acronyms and connection-codes is not exactly simple or clear. And I see little point in a scattergun approach, buying and fitting a random selection of different HDDs of different brands on the basis that some may turn out to have the right connectors or interfaces and maybe one of them might work. Just throwing parts at an old computer without knowing where the fault lies, nor even knowing if they'll fit, seems to me a fool's game.
You may be right that the BIOS is having trouble finding my hard drive.
But I don't completely understand your advice. What and where are "dip switches"? Are you referring to what some people call the "jumper" connectors on the back (or side) of the hard disk drive (between the PATA/IDE connector and the power-supply socket?
A quick internet search and a check on my setup shows that the jumper is in the "cable select" position on the hard drive; and the screen display when i try to boot (when the "Verifiying DMI Pool Data " message appears), gives a list of devices which shows the hard drive as Master, and the CDROM as Slave. I believe that is how the devices are supposed to be configured. What should I change?
And for your other suggestion - what and where is "the boot line"? Can you give step-by-step guidance on exactly what to do and where? Is this changing something in the BIOS setup? Or editing some file? And if so what file, and how can i do this? In a Live session?
Thanks again @Gabriel_M ... but unfortunately I don't think I have moved anything forward.
The jumper is on CS (cable select), which is shown as the default setting. That is to say, it links pins 1 and 2, according to the diagrams I have found.
As I understand it - and as shown in the initial screen when I try to boot up - the Western Digital hard disk drive is already set as the Master. The CDROM (is that considered a "drive"?) is listed as the Slave.
So what do I need to change? The three other settings possible for the jumper are
- Single: no jumper at all
- Dual (Master): jumper pins 5 and 6
- Dual (Slave): jumper pins 3 and 4
I have left the jumper on the default CS setting.
I booted into a Live session of MX21.3, and went to look at MX Tools>MX Boot Options. The screen shows four headings
The first heading is Options. It shows a menu timeout of 5 secs, and the 'Boot to' box is blank. Below that, Kernel parameters, and in that box the only entry is 'quiet splash'.
The other three headings are Background, Splash, and Messages. At the bottom is a 'Display Log' button. Clicking that gives a message that "Nothing has been logged yet..."
I have no idea how to edit the Grub configuration template, and no idea how or where to add a kernel parameter.
Sorry. I just don't have the knowledge, the instruction manual and the step-by-step guidance that might enable me to change or fix things.
Right now I feel like I am being asked to overhaul a car engine using a knife and fork and with a blindfold on!
A quick follow up. Without messing with the jumpers, I booted into a Live session, went looking for the file /etc/default/grub, found it, and - I think - successfully added the two new code-entries "sudo nano /etc/default/grub" and "insmod = ide generic". Saved and exited.
Then in the terminal, tried "sudo update-grub". got an error message: "... failed to get canonical path of overlay". That means absolutely nothing to me, and leaves me even more confused.
What else, or what more, can I do? This seems to be going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, with no clear route-map to a solution.
