On Friday, February 18, 2011 08:43:43 am Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Hi Andrew, > > > After spending days(!) fscking and trying to decode all kinds of stuff > > I stepped back and saw the light - I MUST have a duff disk!!!!. > > `smartctl -a /dev/sda' can be useful to get the drive's own stats on how > things are going. (Does fsck(8) still only check a filesystem's > metadata?) smartctl(8) can, I think, be used to get the drive to do > some non-destructive tests on all sectors. May be something to try now > you've nothing to risk losing from them, although I don't know how well > the SMART commands work through non-[PS]ATA interfaces. > > > I therefore went out and replaced BOTH disks (which were Hitachi > > Desktar 200GB IDE units which on extracting them I find are dated 2005 > > (so fair enough!). > > Post IBM's Deathstar then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Deathstar > ;-) > > > "The "green" credentials of the new disks will mean they will power > > down after (20? secs) of inactivity and take too long to power up > > causing linux Raid to fail a disk and detach it." !!! > > hdparm(8) has options, e.g -S (capital), to control aspects like idle > spin-down time; perhaps that can help. I didn't realise any modern > drives took too long to spin up though. > > Cheers, > Ralph. > > > -- > Next meeting: Blandford Forum, Wednesday 2011-03-02 20:00 > Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue Hi Ralph, I recall I did try probing the disk with smartctl before I replaced it, but the counts it returned said it was all good (i.e. all fail caounts were zero). Interestingly if I now try to run smartctl on the old disk (connected by my external IDE/USB connector) - appearing as /dev/sde, I get : ---------- smartctl -a /dev/sde
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [i386-redhat-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net /dev/sde: Unsupported USB bridge [0x04cf:0x8818 (0xb008)] Smartctl: please specify device type with the -d option. Use smartctl -h to get a usage summary ---------- Which I have to say - is a understandable but a disappointment! You are prob right about spin-up (It could be that the notes I came across on an internet search were not that accurate). I understood that "Green" drives try to hide the fact that they are "spun- down" (presumably with huge buffers?) and even (according to what I have read) dont log their spin-downs for things like smartctl to get at - i have seen a few angry comments about that. What kind of spin-up times do you think are normal for a modern hard-drive then? Andy -- Next meeting: Blandford Forum, Wednesday 2011-03-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
