On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 02:12:32PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: > Since failures with /dev/hdc I have been paying attention to smartctl. > > It is a, how should one say it, interesting program that provides lots > of data. > > But it is not clear to me how you can prevent disk failure other than > buying a disk with 5 year warranty, or something. That also won't prevent disk failure. It will just get you your money back or get you a new hard disk. If it fails your data is still lost. A warranty is no replacement for a backup regime. But yes, I would sooner trust and buy a hard disk with a warranty of five years than of one year. :) Smartctl just gives you advance warning when your hard disk is at risk of failure. When you receive such a signal then make a backup and get ready to insert a new hard disk. I use logcheck so I get an hourly email about events on my system. There are some messages from smartctl that I don't worry about, so I let logcheck ignore them. Here are the relevant lines that I have in /etc/logcheck/ignore.d.workstation/local. These probably don't work well for your system, so adapt as you see fit. ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ smartd\[[0-9]+\]: Device: /dev/hdb, SMART Usage Attribute: 3 Spin_Up_Time changed from ([89][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}) to ([89][0-9]|1[0-9]{2})$ ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ smartd\[[0-9]+\]: Device: /dev/hdc, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from [0-9]{3} to [0-9]{3}$ These lines have been here for months, so for my system these messages are no reason to run to the computer shop. ;) But I do make daily backups of course. -- Maurits van Rees | http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands] Public GnuPG key: http://maurits.vanrees.org/var/gpgkey.asc "It can seem like you're doing just fine, but the creep's creeping into your mind." - Neal Morse
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