thanks Eric! I don't think the drive is bad  because I can still access
sda3. unfortunately sda1 is where the operating system is .

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Technomage Hawke <
technomage.hawke@gmail.com> wrote:

> you can load a live DVD into the system and then try one of the many HDD
> test tools (badblocks with no options is a safe bet and will tell you
> almost immediately if there are any problems). I know there is another
> command line tool that can test drive throughput and read the SMART tables
> on the controller. I can't remember its name off hand, but it is a good one
> to test the drive electronics.
>
> -eric
>
> On Feb 17, 2012, at 10:I don't think 05 AM, Michael Havens wrote:
>
> > Yep.... I think I had a hard disk failure. I restarted my computer and
> was presented with:
> >
> >      error: unknown filesystem.
> >      grub rescue>
> >
> > I then typed 'ls' and the response was
> >
> >      (hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos1) (fd0)
> >
> > which is two partitions, the swap drive, and the floppy disk
> > how do I verify my suspicion of drive failure?
> > funny how all this happened just as I was attempting to back it up.
> >
> > --
> > :-)~MIKE~(-:
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-- 
:-)~MIKE~(-: