UNC Linux Users Group

[Mark Reed <markreed AT unc.edu>]

Have you tried using smartctl to test the drive? This is a utility to 
access the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting
Technology (SMART) system built into most disks now. The idea behind this 
is to be able to predict some types of disk failure. I'm pretty new to this 
and have just recently gotten involved in a project that is looking into 
this.

The web page is <http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/>
and see the first link to the article in Linux Journal by Bruce Allen. This 
covers running the basic tests to look for pre failue.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has had any good/bad experiences with 
smart or smartmontools.

cheers,
Mark Reed

--On Wednesday, September 08, 2004 10:28:26 AM -0400 Cristobal M Palmer 
<cmpalmer AT email.unc.edu> wrote:

> I'm running Debian and WinXP on a CCI-issue T30 (three years old), and
> yesterday I nearly suffered a myocardial infarction. I thought I had a bad
> sector on the Linux partition. I could boot up in Windows just fine,
> but--needless to say--everything important is on the Debian partition(s).
>
> I ended up booting from a CD (huzzah for Knoppix!) and running e2fsck -y
> /dev/hda6.
>
> That seems to have fixed everything.
>
> So my question is this:
>
> Do I need to look into replacing my HD? Should I be frantically backing
> everything up (not that I haven't been keeping backups, mind you)? If the
> answer to either of these is yes, what's the easy/cheap way?
>
> Thanks, and remember the sage advice of Mr. Wozniak: "Never trust a
> computer you can't throw out a window."
>
>                                                                .--.
>                                                               |o_o |
>                                                               ||_/ |
> Peace,                                                       //   \ \
>                                                             (|     | )
>   CMP                                                      /'\_   _/`\
>                                                            \___)=(___/
>
>
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--------
Mark S.C. Reed
Computational Scientist
UNC-Ch ATN/HPC
919-843-5113
markreed AT unc.edu