Can DSL run without a HD

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Can DSL run without a HD
started by: Locked

Posted by Locked on July 08 2006,19:09

On my sister's lab top, her hard drive broke, so we took it to get a new hard drive and to reinstall windows. When the new hard drive was in, they couldn't install it at all, so they said the motherboard was also broken. I think they're wrong, so i was wondering if DSL was capable of running without there even being a harddrive in a computer, just to see if theres more than just the harddrive broken.

Posted by kerry on July 08 2006,21:26

yes, i run mine totally in ram. my laptop hd gave out a few months back and a new one cost more than the computer is worth. i just leave it on and let the screen go to sleep when not in use and move the mouse or open the top to wake it up, it has been running like that for over 2 months. so if you have enough memory(ram) try the >dsl toram < cheat code to load it to ram. i have 256ram shared which wasn't enough to hold all the app's i wanted to install so i used a old usb key a swap to give me extra room for those extra app's. good luck

Posted by Locked on July 09 2006,14:06

Thank you for the help, the dsl toram worked and allowed it to load, so now i know only the hard drive was broke.

Posted by brianw on July 09 2006,16:12

Try using DSL to see the hard drive yourself and see what happens. open a terminal and type the following:
sudo fdisk -l
this will list the existing partition table. If there are no partitions you can create one and install windows or DSL (then go back to the people you paid to get it working and say "what's up"). If you get an error it may be the hard drive or the controller on the mother board (ideally one of those 3.5 inch USB enclosures would allow you to test the hardrive).

Posted by underdog5004 on July 11 2006,22:59

@ Kerry

It may not be a good idea to use a usb penkey as swap...flash memory only has a limited ability for writes before the drive becomes useless...or unwriteable...

-Matthew

Posted by kerry on July 11 2006,23:47

i know underdog5004, the swap barely gets used i just needed it to hold some of the system so i can run the apps i do use. what happens is the apps i use regularly pushes the system apps that just sit there on to the usb swap so instead of taking up ram i'm using for the actual apps i'm using, since the stuff that gets pushed off to the usb rarely(never) gets used it just sits there with no activity in the usb. basically i just needed more space. my laptop is a hp omnibook xe2 450mhz 256ram, the hd died,the floppy and cdrom are ify, but it still manages to work if i can get the system into ram. it's been up and running like that for almost 3 months.

also i don't really care about the usb as it is one that was already on the verge of dieing, it was very ify, somtimes would work, sometimes not, but i've had no problems using it as swap for more space.