Re: why would fdisk -l take so long?

[Neal Murphy <neal.p.murphy@alum.wpi.edu>]

On Friday, September 28, 2012 08:58:47 PM Albretch Mueller wrote:
> > > >    1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   115   082   006    Pre-fail
> > > > 
> > > > Always       -       96695847
> > > 
> > > Ok, your disk is dying. The Raw_Read_Error_Rate should be zero, or very
> > > low.
> > 
> > Not necessarily. At least one disk mfr (Seagate?) puts large values in
> > these fields. Cause me a few moments' consternation the first time I saw
> > it on my own drives....
> 
> ~
>  Indeed! Something "spooky" may be going on. After taking the drive
> out in order to back it up, I have run "fdisk -l" with no disk and
> sometimes with a pen drive inserted and these bellow are the results I
> got.
> ~
>  Don't you find all of this downright weird?

Not yet.

> ~
>  I don't believe in ghosts ;-) What do you think I could do to
> troubleshoot this further?

Have you tried "fdisk -l /dev/sda"? I think you did, to no avail. It might be 
searching some other drive or type of drive first that is slow to respond.

Check the drive's power state:
  hdparm -C /dev/sda

How about:
  tail -f /var/log/messages  # In a separate window
  time dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=1
  time fdisk -l /dev/sda
to see if the drive is dozing.

Or (from hdparm's man page:  Disable  the  automatic power-saving
function of certain Seagate drives...):
  hdparm -Z /dev/sda