on Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 05:59:57PM -0400, Silvan (dmmcintyr@users.sourceforge.net) wrote:
> On Thursday 08 July 2004 06:59 am, Karsten M. Self wrote:
>
> > - Bad drive?
>
> I'm not an expert by any stretch, but I think it quite likely. One of
> those old reports you read might have been mine. I don't remember the
> model number I had, but if yours is one of the ~5400 RPM 40 GB
> Maxtors, the one I had was junk. Mine died barely into the three year
> warranty, and I didn't even bother to return it and get the
> replacement. (I cut it in half, actually. :)
That's pretty much the conclusion I'm coming to. No more results to
publish right now, but some more poking around with SMART tells me the
drive's risking imminent failure. I'm backing data off of it now (very
slowly), hope to replace it tomorrow.
I also downloaded the Maxtor test utility (Smartmon?) which requires a
legacy MS Windows box to create a floppy (idiots). Remind me to cut an
image of that. Haven't run it yet as I'd need to reboot the system and
kill my backup.
I _also_ booted the system on Knoppix briefly to check that it was
getting the same 'hdparm -tT /dev/hda' results I was (sanity check on
hdparm settings). Yep, within spitting distance, anyways.
A few additional notes.
- After installing smartsuite, I found that the smartmontools package
is the currently maintained, up-to-date, and replacement package.
More useful information from this.
- Running the "short" test (nominal runtime: 2 minutes) failed to
complete in well over two hours. I'm trying to avoid stressing the
drive more than necessary while I recover data from it.
- There's a good article on monitoring drives with SMART tools in
January 2004 Linux Journal:
Monitoring Hard Disks with SMART
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983
...though interpreting the reports is still something of a black
art. There's really good docs at:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
...including links to specs and stuff. Reading 'em now.
The Seagate whitepaper's interesting of itself. A 5C temperature
rise from 25F to 30F decreases drive MTBF by 25%. Keep them
platters cool!
The smartmontools package will keep track of your disk(s) and notify you
in advance when they start acting up. *VERY* strongly recommended
package for anyone w/ HW from the past 4-5 years.
> I have a 7200 RPM Maxtor based on a Quantum design that has run
> flawlessly for a good long while now. This drive is black. The other
> one was silver.
Silver here, I believe, though it's in an odd vertical caddy on this
system (a repurposed Dell desktop) which makes it hard to tell.
> If you can, I think I'd try a different drive. You may not have much
> choice anyway. When mine decided to die, it gave me no real warning.
> Weird problems, but nothing I could really put my finger on. I kept
> thinking it was the kernel, or the ext3 filesystem, or my hdparm
> settings. Running it all ext2 seemed to get it going. Then, as luck
> would have it, mere hours after I copied its contents onto another
> drive, it started head bashing.
Yeah. I'm also getting clicks out of the machine though I'm not sure if
they're the HD or the Zip drive (unused, but present) immediately above
it. Haven't tried disconnecting the Zip to isolate it.
Thanks for the responses, I'll report back w/ more.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
You mean you were meant to hijack my truck, make me crash it, and
have every security man in town looking for me?
- "Brazil"
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