Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Graziano_M 166 days ago
I had a friend's dad's computer's HDD fail while I was installing Linux on it to show him it. That was terrifying. I still remember the error, and I just left with it (and Windows) unable to boot. Later my friend told me that the drive was toast.

Come to think of it, maybe it was me. I might have trashed the MBR? I remember the error, though, "Non system disk or disk error".
2 comments
toast0 166 days ago
IIRC, that error text comes from the mbr. You may have trashed the partition table?
link
Graziano_M 165 days ago
Yeah, I think so. It's been ~25 years, and only while typing out that comment did I remember the error message and realize that's probably what I had done.

If I recall correctly, he ended up scrapping the drive.

link
justinclift 166 days ago
Yeah, sounds like the drive was still physically detected but that the expected boot loader wasn't present any more.
link