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If I can persuade pine to send this from the right account, this time... (and apologies to the moderator)

My PC is currently a very sick penguin; I think that the HDD has died, but I also have my suspicions that it could be the IDE interface. Short of swapping drives (as I don't have a spare), can anyone hazard a guess as to how I work this out, or if it could be something else entirely?

Errors include (from memory) {hdb: drive not ready error}

Typing 'ls' returns a set of io errors, one naming each file in the directory.

Typing 'clear' (or mount, etc) returns 'command not found'

Shutting down gives me a console that repeats 'ext3 journal aborting' ad infinitum. Eventually I just powered it off.

TIA for any help,

Richard

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