Gary said:
Install smartmontools on your system and check the backup drive's
SMART status. Something like
smartctl -H /dev/sde
If it passes, then reusing is OK. Otherwise, try to recover what you
can by making a copy of the disk using dd-
rescue.
Hans said:
To your question for reuse: I would say yes, and if you can reformat it, I
would use ext4. It is stable and fast.
For the future you might want to install smartd, which checks your harddrive
at ruinning time, and warns you, if there are defects. It is posible, to lower
the line, so that smartd is warning much earlier than normal (normal is, when
I remember correctly, abou 10 percent defections)
Thanks both, unfortunately its a 3tb USB external hard drive, with
smartd installed and working, except, it doesn't work on external USB
drives! And due to its size, it was 93% full with backups, doing a
direct copy is not feasible. The backups are all done with obnam, so it
just seems that I'll have to reformat, and start a new series of backups
on it. And if I get that "Kernel errors report" again, start making
alternative plans for replacing the drive, before it dies on me. It was
formatted ext4 before, which was why I queried if there was anything
better, but I'll have a play with it after dinner.
Thanks
Sharon.