[PLUG] Hardware/ide timeout problems...(?)

[lynchman@lynchman.net]

Hello,
I am having a wonderful problem with one of my Debain linux boxes, and of course it has to be on my gateway/router box, so my internet access is currently dead.  Anyway, I was updating the system yesterday (installing new versions of packages and a new kernel) and it was going ungodly slow, but I really did not think too much of it.  But after I went to reboot the system it never came back up.

When it is booting now, I keep getting IRQ Timeouts (Waiting for DMA).  It then says something like DMA disabled and IDE0: reset.  It then usually locks during fsck.  I tried rebooting using the old kernel, but the same thing happens, and if I skip fsck, it still keeps giving the IRQ timeout errors and will lock up during init.

I am assuming that this is a hardware problem, but does anyone know if it is a problem with the harddrive or with the IDE port on the mainboard?  I suspect it is a problem with the harddrive.  

I even tried booting with the read-only kernel/lilo flag, but it still never makes it all the way through the boot.  So I am expecting to go out and purchase a new hard disk this evening, but is there any way that I will be able to recover the data on the harddrive? (I would like to make the new harddisk boot, and then do a complete copy of the root filesystem of the old HD to the new disk so I do not have to completely re-install and re-configure my server). 

Does anyone have any suggestions on how the best way to do this would be and if it may even be possible?
Thanks,
-Pete


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