Re: Dying hard drive?

[Jon Dowland <jmtd@debian.org>]

First and foremost, double check that your SATA cables are properly
secure.

Install smartctl and run smartctl -a /dev/$disk0 (where $disk0
is e.g. sda); check to see if any of the various SMART attributes
indicate a problem.

Run a short, then a long SMART self test

  smartctl -t short /dev/$disk0
  smartctl -t long  /dev/$disk0

Note that long tests take a LONG time, and you might be best leaving
it running and not using the disk much at the same time. It is an
online test, but it can be noisy.