smartctl vs cat
hello,
I have a hdd which i suspect id dieing [yes i have burnt cds of any
important stuf] this drive is in a windows box, so stuck in knoppix cd
for diagnostics.
cat /dev/hda >/dev/null
gives no output [no errors?] -me thought that would be a good indication
that all sectors of the disk are readable. But im not convinced so tried
smartctl.
smarctl -x /dev/hda gives nasties such as irq timeout, status timeout,
drive not ready for command, read failure, input/output error.
sounds happy doesnt it!
the disk can be replaced -im convinced its dead now!
but why did the cat work successfully??
would i have seen errors if i hadnt directed to /dev/null?
[well if i could read them fast enough while the garbage is scrolling]
the prob with cat without the redirect is the beeping is far to annoying
and even if i use setterm -blengh 0 before hand, the beeping starts
fairly soon anyway [i guess this is to do with the random data from the
hdd comin across the right escape sequence to re-enable the bell?
-chances are fairly small i would have thought]
i thought i should be ok as using > in that context diverts the main
output not standard error
can anyone explain why the cat worked?
thanks
hugh
Reply to: