Centos recovering from Kernel panic on startup

[Shane]

>
> Also.... have you tried running SMART utilities on the disk?
> The manufacturer may have a bootable ISO that you can use to test the
> disk (warning! if the disk is _really_ bad then running the self-test or
> SMART diagnostics may nuke what little is left of your filesystem. get
> the DD copy first if at all possible!)
>

rather than searching manufacturer sites for ISO's etc you may want to
grab "The Ultimate Boot CD" has tons of disk, motherboard etc tools on
it to test and repair disks ...v.handy for finding faults and its all
in one handy CD.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Shane.