On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Jerry Feldman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 03/11/2011 11:31 AM, Laura Conrad wrote: >> Recently, when I scan, I'm often missing a piece of the page. I notice >> that this happens when the disk drive is also busy doing something else, >> like a backup. >> >> I don't remember this happening until the last couple of weeks. Do you >> think: >> >> My scanner is dying >> >> My disk drive is dying >> >> I'm just scanning and/or backing up more often >> >> I'm most concerned about the second possibility -- I would want to do >> something about the drive before it died. If the scanner died, I could >> usually either wait or convince someone else to do it for me. >> > Laura, I advise you to get a new disk drive ASAP. SATA drives are > relatively inexpensive. But, if both are causing troubles, it could > possibly be your mother board. In any case, make sure you have a good > backup of your data whether a local backup to media or an online backup > to one of the online backup sites that have been discussed here. I knew > one of my drives was going bad a few years ago, and I failed to replace > it before it failed, and it cost me some $$ to do a recovery.
Having backups is always a good idea, but I think this is jumping to conclusions. At a minimum, check your various system log files (in /var/log) for errors related to your disk (hd* or sd*). While you are at it, check to see if there are any errors related to your scanner (probably USB). Install smartctl/smartmontools and use them to query your disk directly for recent error logs. As far as backups go, I would suggest getting an external USB drive to be used solely for backups and setting up automated backups using cron/crontabs. The one truism about backups is that if it requires human intervention it probably doesn't happen. Bill Bogstad _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
