[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Is my hard disk about to crash?



* Aditya Pratap V.:
>
> ide-cd: cmd 0x2b timed out
  ^^^^^^
> hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }

Are you sure hdc is your hard disk? For the rest of this mail, I'll
assume it is.

> hdc: irq timeout: error=0x00
> hdc: DMA disabled
> hdc: ATAPI reset complete
> hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete
> Error }
> hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x30
> ide: failed opcode was 100
> end_request: I/O error, dev hdc, sector 64

If I understand this correctly, that is bad, but any not-too-old disk
should be able to mark the sector as bad and won't use it anymore. If
you only got this message once, don't be too frightened. (But as always,
you are safe with a current backup)

> It is showing a badsector at sector 64. How can I set it right?

I think your disk should handle the situation by itself. If you are
still unsure you can backup the partition and do an 'fsck.ext3 -c
/dev/hdX' which reformats and scans the whole partition for bad blocks.

Another probably good suggestion is to install the package smartmontools
and look at the output of 'smartctl -a /dev/hdX | less'. There will be a
line like 

|196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age Offline      -       0

Watch the last number (zero in my case) and see if it grows over some
time (days or even weeks). This is your disk's memory of the number of
damaged sectors it has recognized (and doesn't use anymore). You may
also have

|197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age Offline      -       0

with a non-zero number at the end. This is the number of sectors that
are recognized as being bad, but the disk hasn't recovered from that
yet.

You can do many other cool things with smartmontools (see man smartd).
It even saved me once from losing more than 80GB of data for which I
didn't have a backup then. Its tests warned me in advance before the
disk died (and before the disk checking tool from Maxtor told me to RMA
it).

J.
-- 
My medicine shelf is my altar.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
                 <http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>



Reply to: