Don Quixote de la Mancha wrote: > "Has Your Data Been Saved?" -- Saint $ilicon > > Have You Got Religion? If you didn't have Religion before, I bet you do now! Everyone in foxholes prays :-) > 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. You are probably talking about me. That disc has passed every test I can give it. It has done the SMART offline collection, short test, long test, and conveyance test. I have run disc diagnostics which read every sector. Aside from being slow, it has passed every test with flying colors, and it has not even one reallocated sector. So, I'm still living with an apparently good disc which is unexplainably slow. OTOH, I have a recent full backup of all my data. > 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 It may read SMART data. Many BIOS do. [...] > 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. This is untrue. I have, for example, a SEAGATE external USB hard disc for which they do not provide a free download of diagnostic software. I have complained about this to them, and plan to check back in a few months to see whether this has changed. MOST manufacturers provide such software for all their drives. If SEAGATE doesn't come up with one, I'm going to be more circumspect about purchasing their drives in the future. I'll check first for the diagnostics' existence. [...] > 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. Umm, there is an "offline test" which does mostly what you suggest, but is not really a test, only a data collection, a short test which actually reads a bunch of sectors, and a long test (extended) which supoosedly reads every sector. WD specifies that on one drive I have their "offline test" takes 8400 seconds (which is more than two hours), the "short test" takes 2 minutes, and the "extended test" takes 100 minutes. Some drives also support a "conveyance test" which supposedly checks for likely damage as a result of conveying (physically moving) the disc. WD specifies that their conveyance test on one drive takes 5 minutes. Also, MAXTOR, for example, specifies that the "offline test" (not really a test, but a data collection) on one of their discs takes over four minutes. Your information is correct in the essentials, but somewhat incorrect in some of the details of timing. Those tests are not as quick as you suggest on the drives I have access to, which are not all that big. > 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. This is undoubtedly the best information that can be given. Immediately perform a full backup. Then test that backup, to ensure that data can actually be pulled back from it successfully. Then, get a new drive, and using whatever technique you like clone off the data. [more very good stuff snipped...] > 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. You reformat and reuse failing drives? Did I read that right? > 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. I'm sure we're all waiting, like the fisher, with baited breath. I know I'm interested in reading what you have to say. Mike -- p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Oppose globalization and One World Governments like the UN. This message made from 100% recycled bits. You have found the bank of Larn. I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that! -- 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
