> My computer runs RedHat 7.1 dual-booted with Windows 98.
> I am having a problem under both systems where one of
> the disks seems to be balking -- taking sometimes a
> few seconds to respond.  This is one of three physical
> If I hit the disk really hard, there is no delay.
> I did a find -type f -exec wc {} \; across the
> whole system and it screamed right through it.

> Since this occurs under Linux, maybe someone can suggest
> a raw-disk accessing technique

If I understand what you're saying, that your purpose is simply to access
the disk drive, how about trying dd?

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=1024k

Or use the character device if you prefer.

> Oh, and how can I build or download a floppy-only system
> that will allow me to run apart from the hard disks?
> (I'm looking for a cookbook, if one exists.)

Yep, I think you may be looking for tomsrtbt (Tom's Root Boot), one of the
most impressive IT diagnostic tools around. It's gotten me out of a couple
of jams. You can make yourself a bootable floppy with more Linux on it than
you would believe is possible, including ability to mount disks, ability to
configure networking, and even tools like emacs. You have to see it to
believe it.

It's at <http://www.toms.net/rb/>

As for your question about VMware ... I'm running 256MB on a P3, and I found
access was adequate for that, but I haven't used it for any heavy-duty work.
(I run NT on it.)

-- 
Lynn David Newton
Phoenix, Arizona