On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Don Quixote de la Mancha <quixote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > "Has Your Data Been Saved?" -- Saint $ilicon > > Have You Got Religion? If you didn't have Religion before, I bet you do now! > > Just a week or so ago there was a thread on this list started by > someone who had a very slow hard drive, that turned out to be failing > some tests. > > Your BIOS test is very little more than a basic sanity check. All it > is really able to do is check whether your disk is working at all. It > would detect a fried controller board or an improperly seated cable, > but if the magnetic coating on your platter were getting divots in it, > the BIOS test wouldn't detect it at all. > > While I know that it's not PC to recommend completely Non-Free > software, for something like disk drive diagnostics, you really want > to use the diagnostic tools provided by the vendor of your particular > hard disk. Every disk drive manufacturer provides these tools as a > free download from their website. > > Most of the tools come in the form of floppy disk images or CD ISO > images. You write the image to the appropriate kind of disk, then > boot off of it into DOS, DR-DOS or FreeDOS. The actual diagnostic > tool is a DOS .exe program. > > Some of the tools also come in the form of Windows installers, but > those won't work when you need to test your boot drive. > > You should be able to find out who made your drive by doing: > > $ dmesg | less > > and then examining the messages until you find a mention of your drive. > > The reason the vendor-specific drive utilities are so important is > that every hard drive contains some proprietary firmware that is > almost certainly completely undocumented, or else available only under > a Non-Disclosure Agreement. > > These diagnostic boot disks will tell that proprietary firmware to > self-test your drive in ways that S.M.A.R.T. simply is unable to, > because these tests access stuff like the JTAG self-test functions of > each individual chip in your drive's controller board. > > Generally there is a short test, a non-destructive basic test, a > non-destructive long test, and a destructive test that writes zeroes > to every sector of the drive. The short test is the one that will > access the JTAG functions of all your chips - this test only lasts a > few seconds. > > If any of these tests fail, don't wait another minute! Back up your > drive *completely* and replace it. Your data is worth far, far more > than any amount of money that you paid for your laptop. A brand-new > 2.5" SATA drive that is a lot bigger than your current drive will only > set you back a hundred bucks. > > If your laptop is old, and so uses parallel IDE, it is quite likely > that your drive mechanism is simply worn out. It's harder to find > 2.5" parallel IDE drives these days, but they can still be had and > again are inexpensive. > > Because I am often called upon to rescue borked boxes for my friends > and family, so I make it a practice to keep a CD binder with the very > latest diagnostic tools from all the different drive vendors - there > are only a few anymore - as well as both Memtest86, Memtest86+ and > Memtest OS X. > > Whenever some panicked relative wakes me with a late-night phone call > because they can't open their Excel spreadsheets anymore, the first > thing I do is run one of the memory tests, with the drive test being > second. > > I also keep current copies of the SystemRescueCd, which is a Linux > boot CD full of disk utilities - it is meant specifically to repair > busted Windows boxes, and quite handily, has a Linux tool that you can > use to reset the Windows NT Administrator Password on all of your > co-workers boxes, that you may watch hilarity ensue. > > The final component of my rescue toolkit is an external drive. A USB > enclosure with a 2.5" SATA drive is just about always sufficient, but > just to make sure I can connect to just about anything, I pay extra > for enclosures that provide USB2, FireWire 400 (1394a) and eSATA. > > If it turns out that I can't just fixed the problem, I am able to run > a full backup under SystemRescueCd to the external drive, then either > reformat and reinstall the failed system, or remove the failed drive > completely and replace it with a brand new one. > > I'm gonna write this all up in a more coherent and detailed way and > post it on my website: http://www.dulcineatech.com/ I'll post the > link here when it's online. But probably not until this weekend. > thanks, that's very comprehensive and informative to read. > Don Quixote > -- > Don Quixote de la Mancha > quixote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://www.dulcineatech.com > > Dulcinea Technologies Corporation: Software of Elegance and Beauty. > -- > users mailing list > users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users > Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > -- http://etvillage.blogspot.com/ -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
