Re: [OT] how to detect a dying hard drive
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On 26-Feb-08, at 5:18 PM, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote:
Is there any tool available in Debian which can tell the remaining
life of a
hard drive? Also, what log files should one monitor to see if there is
something wrong with the hard drive? What are the various error
messages I
should look out for?
I checked the hard drive for badblocks and there are none. But
somehow I
feel (cannot prove) that it is taking up a lot of time to write
large files
than it did before. That is why I think the hard drive could be dying.
smartmontools http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ will retrieve
smart info and
can be helpful. Also worth doing is checking the manufacturer's
website for a
bootable cd image that will run non-destructive checks (of course,
backup first anyway!)
I find if smart says it's bad, it's bad, but the reverse is not
necessarily true.
Note modern drives automatically try to work around bad blocks once
they see them.
You can 'fix' a drive by writing lots of data so that the problems
are seen by the drive hardware.
Once it runs out of relocatable sectors though....
HTH
Brian
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