Re: why would fdisk -l take so long?

[Albretch Mueller <lbrtchx@gmail.com>]

 in a box in which I use the fromhd stanza using a disk which smartclt
reports as being fine the results before and after suspending are the
same
~
 this is what the dying disk reports
~
$ date; X=`(time fdisk -l) 2>&1 | grep real`; echo $X
Fri Sep 28 10:52:58 UTC 2012
real 0m0.191s
$ date; X=`(time fdisk -l) 2>&1 | grep real`; echo $X
Fri Sep 28 10:52:59 UTC 2012
real 0m0.055s
$ date; X=`(time fdisk -l) 2>&1 | grep real`; echo $X
Fri Sep 28 10:53:00 UTC 2012
real 0m0.052s
~
 it then stabilize around 0.050s
~
 For the good ones time consistently reports 0.003s
~
 the thing is (for more than one reason) I use a crappy box to go online
~
 Also, any comprehensive documentation regarding hd's health?
smartctl's is OK to get by, but you are telling me about logs I don't
know about and I would like to know more about the physics of it
~
 lbrtchx