Thanks for your analysis, Jamie. Below are some clarifications and more questions.
> My guess is your original boot block had an issue (not being properly > linked?) and the fsck ran by the boot process probably re-linked to an > alternate boot block What causes a boot block to become unlinked? And wouldn't one of the many filesystem checks I ran manually have found that right away? > (Ive seen this before, but had to manually hit y to do so... it may > have not prompted you?). The message Ive seen does specify that its > boot block, not part of the rest of the filesystem, it even mentions > the specific locations. I do not recall seeing any mention of boot blocks. The messages I saw after the "unclean shutdown" referred to unlinked file fragments that it offered to put in a folder for me. At first I told it to just discard the lost fragments but then it gave another and yet another warning so I said OK, go ahead and save them if you like. > However... this is just a guess... I couldnt say definitively > anything other than it sounds like something to do with your > secondary storage device. What do you mean by a "secondary storage device"? I only have one hard disk in the computer. > : Is there some way to do a surface scan of the hard > : disk under GNU/Linux? Does anyone know the answer to this question? Dex
