On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 18:04:04 +0300, Jussi Lehtola <jussilehtola@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, 2009-06-07 at 09:31 -0500, Mike Chambers wrote: > > On Sun, 2009-06-07 at 16:41 +0300, Jussi Lehtola wrote: > > > > > You can verify the diagnosis with > > > > > > # smartctl -A /dev/sda > > > > > > If you have a nonzero number in one or more of the following fields > > > Reallocated_Sector_Ct > > > Current_Pending_Sector > > > Offline_Uncorrectable > > > then your hard drive is failing. Especially if you have something in > > > the latter two you should panic. The latter two aren't much different than the first. Drives don't reallocate sectors until you write over them, to give you a chance to try rereading them in the hope you'll eventually get a good read. And unless the counts are high or growing regularly you don't need to panic. While there is a correlation between bad sectors and drive failure, it isn't as high as you might think. If the data is valuable and money isn't a big concern, sure replace the drive promptly. If you're on a tight budget and you have a way to easily recover if the drive fails suddenly, then you might play russian roulette. Drives with a couple of bad sectors can run years before failing. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines