Hard drive

So I upgraded my Linux box to the latest Kubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf!) and it's been an interesting few days ironing out niggles. One of them has been the missing partition manager icon which (IIRC) was present in 14.04 and where I could control which partitions were automounted at login. From the looks of it, there is no easy solution for this like installing a package or some weird Plasma widget. The only solution I was provided on IRC was the following roundabout-borderline-hack:

I got a new 3TB hard disk. While it's being detected in Windows 7, initializing it has proved to be impossible as I keep running into the following error:

The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error

After testing this one a couple of different systems and in Linux, I have arrived at the conclusion that the drive is screwed. Time to get it replaced.

My windows machine is running off a bum drive and seeing as to how HDD prices are temporarily ridiculously high at the moment, I've decided to attempt a few workarounds to see if I can continue to use this erratically faulty drive for a couple of more months. The issue with the drive is in itself unknown. It just locks up suddenly with the HDD LED continuously on. Windows continues to be active for a while, but not terribly responsive. Sometimes, the issue sorts itself out after a while. Other times, the system reboots.

One of my local servers died a quiet death last week. Much as I tried to revive the li'l bitch, she refused to accede to my plaintive entreaties. She is now consigned to a forlorn corner and I am yet to see to her last rites. In the meantime, I have recently introduced a new addition to my family of servers through the cannibalisation of older (and now retired) members of the same. So, I settled on trying to see if I could save the soul of my now recently defunct Kubuntu box by simply transferring its hard drive to this new server. When I tried to do so, this is what transpired:

One of my linux boxen (my fastest with the best hardware) died a couple of days ago :( Motherboard issues. My two other Kubuntu boxen are stocked with hard drives and therefore, when I wanted to retrieve data from the hard drive of my busted PC, I didn't want to risk fucking around with the already overloaded PSUs of said boxen. However, my sole Windows box was pretty free, but obviously Windows does not understand Ext3.