Thus spoke kfogel@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Karl Fogel):
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>problem. There are about 200 MB of data at stake here, including some
[deleted]
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>       C: drive failure
>       RUN SETUP UTILITY
>       Press <F1> to RESUME
[deleted]
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>hardisk I/O error
>dev 0300, sector 4
>Unable to read /dev/hda

        Greetings. That's the BIOS panicking... Is that an IDE drive?
        If so, check the "controller" for a severe failure - some
        of the systems I fixed had literally BLOWN buffer chips.

        If that's not the problem, post the COMPLETE model # of the 
        drive and ask if anyone had the same drive that died of a 
        MEDIA problem - this will see if maybe the controller on the 
        drive is dead.

        IF, someone is REAL nice, ask them if they could send you their
        WORKING drive and see if substituting the boards with your
        drive will fix the problem. The only 2 bad things that this
        will/may do is:

        1) Void the person's warranty
        2) Blow his board (arghh...)

        If that does NOT work, call up a CREDIBLE hard drive recovery
        company (look in Computer Shopper) and ASK for an estimate.
        Consider that you may spend AS MUCH for the recovery as paying
        for someone else'es blown drive (#2 above). 

        While doing all of the above - pray.

        Take care.

        P.S. Ask that angel to back up HIS/HER data before letting you
        do brain surgery on their drive :-)
-- 
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| Filip "I'll buy a vowel" Gieszczykiewicz. | Best e-mail "fmgst+@pitt.edu" |
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