Hi all,

I am running Windows XP on a laptop and about 1 month ago i installed Red Hat 9 on the same hard drive (but on a separate partition) to dual boot with XP. After that i started having problems with my hard drive: it was crashing very often when i was on XP, started making weird clicking sounds...etc., until it kind of died and so i had to get a brand new one. However i had some problems with this hard drive before and so i'm not sure what exactly caused it to crash. I heard some stories from other people about how making linux dual boot with windows destroyed their HD, and the guy in the store told me the same thing.
So is it true that having windows and linux on the same hard drive can destroy it (the HD)?
And also: how about using VMWare and installing linux as a guest OS in order not to make the dual booting thing - is it the same as running linux as just another program on windows, and: does it (VMWare) eliminate the risk of a hard drive crash when running windows and linux together?

That is not true !
You can overwrite and delete things by your own but never destroy your hardware !
A harddrive will not live forever, but some models are so bad, they make noise after a few months.
Then you will get a new one, the same bad model ? It will die soon too!

Dual boot or VMware, there is NO WAY to damage your hardware!

Some people don't know linux, so they don't like it and tell such stupid things.
The guy in the store is happy that you don't noticed, that he sold you scrap!

Sean Paul,

As the previous post by fluppi made clear, there is no truth to the proposition that Linux and MS on the same drive is damaging. That is so much mis-information and FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) mongering. I'll be charitable and assume those who told you that were merely ignorant.

I think VM ware is fabulous software, but would invert what you suggest -- that is, build your computer on GNU/Linux, and run XP in a virtual machine. I have a system at home that dual boots Linux and XP Home. The linux side never fails. The XP side locks up with some regularity, forcing me to power-off reboot. Same hardware, same conditions, different operating systems. Very different operating systems.

The only reason this workstation has XP on it is to support a particularly valuable quilting program that only runs on MS Windows. I'm in the process of buying VMWare to make it easier to stay on Linux, and fire up a VM when we want to use the quilting program.

Good luck, and stay tuned to LinuxQuestions where you are far more likely to get good and correct information than over the retail counter!

Cheers,

Walt

I wish you had asked the guy to explain exactly *how* this supposedly happens - I'd love to hear the answer, even though I can guess as to the general theme.... and considering that there are 10's of thousands of people dual-booting, we'd probably have heard about it a few times here by now

anyway, listen to wrw3, and stick around LQ for accurate info.

The closest thing I remember about linux destroying hardware were some LG cd-writers, which were affected by a very small change in the default Mandrake kernel I think. The firmware contained a bug, causing the thing to literally burn itself into smithereens But this was a bug from the manufacturer, and the reason it hadn't surfaced a long time before (in either linux or windows) was because the ordering of the commands had to be pretty precise..

Atleast, thats how I remember it.. But no, except for that, hardware can't get destroyed by software. Bye yet another myth

Hello,
It is amazing how this rumours start.
Look what happen to you was unfortunate but just a coincidence that the hdd kaput after you made the dual boot. The fact of the matter is that those clanky noises that you heard was a sign that your hdd was near the end. One of my hdd ended just like that, you statr hearing those noises and then they stop, you think it was probably "nothing" , dough, an then one day... that's that.
What bugs me is that I'm unemployed and then there is this person working in a computer shop, giving people such pearls of wisdom...
God... good grief.
All the best to you and keep on with your dual boot.

Strangely enough I've had several multi boot PC's over the years, and about 5 in the house at the moment that run both linux and windows :-)

Drives to die occassionally, even on win or linux only boxes. The people who sell the drives like to blame you when things go wrong with the drive :-)

You can damage a HD by using different versions of fdisk on it.

Windows' fdisk sees different 'boundaries' to what Linux fdisk sees. I have a policy of only ever using 1 tool to partition a disk. Since Linux fdisk is extremely flexible and far more capable than Microsoft fdisk, have a guess which one I use! Yes, I even use it to create Windows partitions.

I have a laptop as well that came with Windows XP Pro, I reconfigured it to dual boot windows XP Pro and Redhat Linux 9 and ran it that way for about 3 years.. then I scrapped the Redhat 9 and set it up to dual boot Windows XP Pro and Debian 3.1. My laptop is now about 6 years old and has been dual booting Linux and Windows XP for pretty much that entire time.. I actually bought a second Hard drive which I configured as Linux only and swap the drives out regularly depending on what I'm doing..

You were definatley given bad information as stated previously.

I don't think so--not in the way we have discussed in this thread. Anything that reads and writes to the disk can cause problems with the file system, the boot code, partition tables, etc. None of these are irreversible---in the limit, you can always wipe the drive and start over.
To actually damage the hardware with software, you would need to cause the hardware to operate in ways it was not intended. Maybe that's possible, but not with common SW.

And you don't classify that as damage?

I'll stick with my policy of only ever using one brand of fdisk, thanks.

No. In the context of this thread, "damage" meant replace the disk. The examples I gave are all recoverable.
Nothing wrong with your policy, however....

I mix and match partitioning tools as well.. it's never been an issue. allow windows to partition it's section from freespace and allow linux to do the same, no big deal.

the damage refered to in this thread is physical hard drive failure, which sounds like a head crash. the ticking noise described is the drive heads searching for their correct positions on the platters, which they are unable to locate. always a bad sound to hear coming from a PC and a definate indicator the drive is failing or has failed. I have never accomplished that type of failure using software on a drive, and never managed to kill a drive by using partitioning tools to the point it couldn't be recovered. (zero-fill anyone ?)

yes you can screw up a working OS install with fdisk from any OS, but you really aren't going to damage the physical media.

the problem is not the multi OS the problem is that windows works better because it has better control of the voltage of your HDD

i had the same problem with my compaq presario and mi hitachi drive

it finnaly crash, and i had to buy a new one.

i've read in a post that WD scoripio doesn't have this problem

and it didn't, but when i installed ubuntu linux the problem reapears

for windows to work better i had to install an intel app called IAS (intel acceleration speed or something) which fix the problem voltage and improve the performance by caching some data in the buffer i guess

the problem is that linux doesn't have this kind of app so the hdd is clicking again.....

now i own a DELL latitude, so appearently is a hardware problem

Give it try if u don't believe me

Chanu
From Argentina

Voltages to computer components are regulated by the hardware in the computer. The operating system does not adjust these voltages at all. The IDE bus operates at a specific voltage, as do all other computer components.

The most likely scenario here is that installing Linux just gave the hard drive a good workout and revealed an existing problem. Reinstalling windows would likely have the same effect.