On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 23:15 +0000, Laurence Orchard wrote: > On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 22:51 +1030, Tim wrote: > > On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:09 +0000, Laurence Orchard wrote: > > > I am not sure that this IS a hardware problem. > > > smartd initially started complaining about /dev/hdf, this is a single > > > filesystem disc of 120Mb that I used only for backup. As I said I > > > remade the filesystem & checked it, but it found NO errors. > > > At the moment it is not used and has not been used since it was > > > remade, but smartd is still complaining of pending sectors. > > > > A file system might still work, for now, on a drive with hardware > > errors. Drives try to hide disk errors from you as much as possible, > > but there's a limit. > > > > If you're not sure about smartd's report, you could try a few things: > > > > Make sure that drive's the only one on the cable, so you don't have some > > other drive confusing things. If you still get errors, it makes that > > drive, or the interface, suspicious. Try the drive plugged in somewhere > > else to eliminate the interface. > > > > Go to the website for your drive's manufacturer, and download there own > > diagnostic tool. If that throws up warnings, then be quite concerned > > that your drive is unreliable. > > > > -- > > Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. > > I read messages from the public lists. > > > Ok, I have spent the afternoon running IBM's Drive Fitness Test & > Western Digital's Diag program. Neither found any errors on the drives > even when running the extended tests which read every sector on the > disc. > You indicate that the drive is not used at present. Have you tried the read/write tests? That is more thorough than the read only tests, but of course is data destructive so should not be used on a drive containing data that should be kept. smartctl also has a lot of testing capabilities and can tell you exactly what smartd is reporting as failure cause. hdparm also has testing and reporting capabilities.
