Hard Drive problems

[slava771]

Hello here is the thing. I got a virus that really messed with my netbook's hard drive. It has been nonoperational for months because I havent been able to fix the problem. The virus I got was the smiley face at bootup that deletes MBR I think. I'm looking for some powerful software that can do some lower level fixes to the hard drive even if it takes long(does something like that exist?)Linux hard drive inspector showed bad sectors, but I suspect the hard drive is mechanically functioning(I hear and feel it spinning). I can't install linux like this: it loads files forever and then gives me an error. I managed to install windows xp somehow but everything is suuuper slow like I have a pentium 2

Is there a software that I can run from Live USB that will tell for certain if the drive is really mechanically broken or its just a logical thing and can be fixed?

What can you pros recommend?

[nonamedotc]

You can wipe your hard disk completely using DBAN - Darik's Boot and Nuke. This will completely wipe your hard disk completely.

You can download the iso file and boot from a CD. Be careful when using this as it will wipe everything completely. Also, it takes a long time to finish. A single no verification pass on a 500GB HDD takes me 1-1/2 hours. See if this helps.

Welcome to the forum

[Gareth Jones]

If you boot a Linux live CD or USB, and open a terminal, I'd run something like (as root):

smartctl -a /dev/sdx > smart1.txt &&
badblocks -w -v /dev/sdx &&
smartclt -a /dev/sdx > smart2.txt

where sdx is whatever Linux calls the dodgy disk.

badblocks will write various bit-sequences to the drive designed to confuse it and catch bad blocks (this takes a while), and will scrub any viruses (and everything else!) off the disk. (Actually a simple "cp /dev/null /dev/sdx" will wipe the disk and give every block a write if you're less paranoid.)

smartctl queries the disk's firmware for hardware failures and the like. Running it twice (before and after badblocks stresses each block) and comparing the output (in smart1.txt and smart2.txt) will detect if the disk is actually in the process of failing.