imminent hard drive failure: you be teh judge!

juniperoots · n00b Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 24

First off, this isn't gentoo-specific, but since this is the hardware section, I thought i'd post just for feedback purposes. I purchased a WD 20G drive a little over 2 months ago. Since then, I've installed maybe half a dozen distros on one partition and win2k on the other. Everything has been relatively quiet until last week when my hard drive started sounding like a barbershop. My hard drive would intermittently get louder and then quiet down. I can't really guage if it's gotten any worse this week, but it doesn't sound healthy. It can't be overheating because I've touched it and it's normal. But this noise is driving me nuts and making think it might crap out soon, leaving me stranded without my fresh gentoo install. Anybody have any suggestions? Can I mirror my drive with linux like with windows?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 7:14 pm Post subject:

juniperoots,

Have a look at the drive with smart tools. It reads the stats from the drive about error rates and so on.

emerge smart -s will put you on the right track.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

juniperoots · n00b Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 24

Danke. I will try that immediately!

ctford0 · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 8:39 pm Post subject:

Could it be vibrating against the computers chasis instead of the hard drive itself making the noise? I've had these type of problems before...

Chris

xg0blin · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 106

My computer gave me that message a few times about a year ago, with my 120G hard drive. It hasn't given me the messages since, and my harddrive still works fine, so go figure.

juniperoots · n00b Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 24

Yeah, I took it back to Fry's and they tested it with a WD module and it came out ok. It still sounds like $@%&, but I guess as long as my data is safe, I'm ok with it. I'm not so sure though because I ran smar tools and SMART seek_error_rate was dipping between 200 and 100. And it specifically mentioned "pre failure" in the text. Oh well, glad i spent that extra 12 bucks for a free replacement. =)