How can you predict when a disk is going to croak? (SOLVED)

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musher0
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How can you predict when a disk is going to croak? (SOLVED)

#1 Post by musher0 »

Hello,all.

I'm rebuilding a machine and I'd like to evaluate some disks I have. How can I tell if a used disk is worth re-installing?

I see the S.M.A.R.T. entry in the BIOS, but I'm unsure how it works, or if it's appropriate for this use.

Thanks in advance for any help.

musher0
Last edited by musher0 on Mon 25 Mar 2013, 16:32, edited 1 time in total.
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rg66
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#2 Post by rg66 »

"S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures."

Just turn it on and if there is problems, you will find out at boot.

I normally dl the manufacturer's diagnostic utility and boot from it to do a thorough test, this can take some time though. The Seagate one is good because it can test drives from a few other manufacturer's.
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Bligh
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#3 Post by Bligh »

In my non commercial experience, actual hdd failures have been very rare in normal usage. I have most disk utilities I could obtain when they were available. I have never found anything that could predict disk life. grc markets a program they claim can do just that but it is fairly pricey. I don't have it. Most failures have been software related I have many hdd's, one 40 gb disk which appeared to have many bad sectors,most were near the center of the disk. I created a 10 gb partition at the beginning of the disk then a small linux swap partition then a 10 data partition at the end of the disk. It appears to work ok. I don't use it for anything I want to keep.
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pemasu
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#4 Post by pemasu »

# smartctl -H /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.8.3-upup] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

linuxcbon
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#5 Post by linuxcbon »

smartmontools-5.39.1-i486.pet can be found at
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51995

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Monsie
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How can you predict when a disk is going to croak?

#6 Post by Monsie »

musher0,

I have been using Gsmartcontol in Wary Puppy. ttuuxxx made a Pet a few years ago and it seems to work fine in many different breeds. You can find more info here and/or download the necessary package(s).

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musher0
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#7 Post by musher0 »

Thank you all for your insight and information !

musher0
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bugman-2.0
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#8 Post by bugman-2.0 »

I'm getting lots of freezes and an inability to shut down programs and/or Puppy itself due to input/output errors. Could a failing hard drive be the issue?

starhawk
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#9 Post by starhawk »

Do you hear a clicking sound when the drive is accessed?

bugman-2.0
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#10 Post by bugman-2.0 »

Not that I'm aware of...

But I downloaded that monitoring program and it said that there were read errors.

starhawk
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#11 Post by starhawk »

Personally, I'd be out shopping for a new drive ASAP.

Read errors... are Not Good.

bugman-2.0
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#12 Post by bugman-2.0 »

Thanks. Running off the old reliable CD player right now. ;)

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James186282
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#13 Post by James186282 »

Ok, this is not written for Linux but it works with Linux partitions just fine. Its a stand along program (A CDROM with a freeware dos to boot it up) called SPINRITE You can find info on it at grc.com Its commercial (I have no connection with them) Its written by a guy who really knows Hard Disks at the low low level. Spinrite is used to recover data (Like sectors that don't read not crashed file structure) but one of its greatest uses is to test your drive and see how many soft errors its had and when that number starts to go up? Time to upgrade to a new drive. If you have an aging drive that you need to get data off really bad there is nothing out there that touches this program.

It does things like seek onto the track from different locations to try to get that "last good read" I guess I could babble on and on but I've used this thing since the early days of the IBM PC and its rarely "updated" because its done "rite" (correctly) ha!
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#14 Post by puppyluvr »

:D Hello,
Hirens boot cd has more tools, specific to brand/type, than you could ever need. HDD tools, MBR tools, Motherboard tools. Memory tools.
Too much to list....
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