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Debian install crashed hard drive?

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I was given a FreeBSD server that I wanted to dual-boot Debian with. It has two hard drives. The first is for the FreeBSD and the second was for backup. I don't know how the FreeBSD system was set up, but when I went to format the hdb for the Debian install in the partitoner, firstly it didn't recognize that FreeBSD was installed on hda. Secondly, when I went to format hdb, it stopped at 98% and froze for literally a day. I rebooted only to find hdb not recognized, and it would no longer boot into FreeBSD.
I don't know much about striping/RAID, etc., but if the two drives were somehow tied together, could this have presented a problem? Also, I swapped out the old CD-ROM for a CD-RW, added a DVD-ROM, and swapped out the (seemingly generic) video card for a Radeon 7500. Could this bear down on the 350watt power supply for an AMD Athlon 1800+ enough to cause erratic hardware problems?
I'm not terribly concerned about the FreeBSD installation, but I would like to keep it for reference.
Any suggestions?

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Re: Debian install crashed hard drive?

Submitted by pinniped on Fri, 2008-05-23 17:01.

"I don't know much about striping/RAID, etc., but if the two drives were somehow tied together, could this have presented a problem"

Yes, depending on the type of RAID, you may have just destroyed about half your data.

Unless you have hardware RAID (becoming increasingly rare these days), I doubt that any 2 software RAID schemes are compatible - for example, you can never mix WinDuhs and LINUX RAID.

As for your 350W power supply, high-end GPUs take so much power it's best to use a 500W supply. The usual symptom of an underrated power supply is a somewhat random reboot.

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Re: Debian install crashed hard drive?

Submitted by chris_friberg on Fri, 2008-05-23 17:19.

Would a software RAID setup be common for a server used to host a couple low volume websites and email or does this sound like overkill? I don't think the second drive would have been used to point to specific directories, ie. /home, swap, etc. otherwise it would have already had multiple partitions most likely. Why the lock-up on 98% of formatting? Doesn't sound software related anyways.
Any one else have any comments, or suggestions?

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Re: Debian install crashed hard drive?

Submitted by pinniped on Fri, 2008-05-23 18:25.

"Would a software RAID setup be common for a server used to host a couple low volume websites and email or does this sound like overkill?"

It depends on the intention of whoever set it up - and if they knew what they were doing. Some people rely on a mirror to save them when a disk goes bad rather than do a proper job of backing up. Others use a striped RAID believing that it will somehow make things faster but without really properly assessing the need for a RAID or its benefits. Logic is simply inapplicable in this situation.

For locking up on formatting, there have been a number of posts indicating different reasons for failure. One of the most common I've seen is defective hardware - sometimes a failing HD, a failing electrical bus, or a buggy chipset that needs a workaround. So sometimes you can format without hassles if you only knew what the problem was and used the appropriate kernel parameters on boot.

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