Hi, Alexander, Thanks for your reply. But in fact, I'm using Maxtor disk diagnosis 4.06 diskette offline for long time. I use it for drive connection test, and quick (90seconds) test. Then I boot the Linux failed machines into netRepair mode, to run "badblocks" programs on all 4 hard disks (/dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, /dev/hdd) one by one to detect sector errors. My only concern is, I have been using "hdparm -d1 -c3 -m16 -a16 -A1 -u1 -W1 -k1 -K1" command on all 4 PATA hard drives, to speed up disk access speed, and improve machines' responsiveness. All other options seems OK except "-u1", which, according to manual, may bring "massive filesystem corruption" (Although for 3 years I have seen no file system corruptions because of that). But if I don't enable the options, the Linux boxes will response way slow to keyboard when high-speed data transfer happens. Any suggestions or hints are greatly appreciated. Thanks. --Guolin Cheng -----Original Message----- From: Alexander Dalloz [mailto:alexander.dalloz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 12:46 PM To: For users of Fedora Core releases Subject: RE: disk problems or false alarm?? Am Fr, den 30.04.2004 schrieb Guolin Cheng um 21:01: > Hi, jludwig, > > Thanks for your helpful information. > > Because I'm running Linux, so I assume there are no viruses. Then comes > several questions: > > 1, How can I know whether all the spare sectors are in use and the disk > will lose data, or it is just the beginning of disk failure? > > 2, How I can identify that the hard drive becomes dying at the first > minute? Use the drive sanity check tool by the drive manufacturer. Hitachi/IBM, Maxtor, WD, they all have such a tool. > 3, How to identify the malfunctioning hard drives? Should I idle the > machine and test hard drives one by one to figure it out? Mostly it is > the faiure-reporting hard drive failed, but I remember for sure, in a > few cases, other alternative hard drives failed instead. hda = master on primary controller hdb = slave on primary controller hdc = master on secondary controller ... > 4, Should I replace hard drives when I first see this kind of disk error > messages in case data begin to lose? First check its state with a tool and other facts like cables. Very old hard drives can only have problems with DMA. You may use hdparm to check drive's setup. > Thanks a LOT... > > Guolin Cheng Alexander -- Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG key 1024D/ED695653 1999-07-13 Fedora GNU/Linux Core 1 (Yarrow) on Athlon CPU kernel 2.4.22-1.2188.nptl Sirendipity 21:41:36 up 3 days, 20:30, load average: 0.45, 0.64, 0.66 [ Γνωθι σ'αυτον - gnothi seauton ] my life is a planetarium - and you are the stars
