On Thu, May 3, 2007 11:27 am, Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade wrote: > On May 3, 2007, at 11:08 AM, Lan Barnes wrote: > >> If it's dying, I can't prove it with smartd, hence my desire to >> take it to >> the installfest Saturday where adults can pore over it. I also >> wondered if >> the DMA controller got fried when the thing overheated. I'm as >> educated >> about hardware as the next Fiji Island native, but it seems to me >> that HD >> problems could arise if DMA in unreliable. So maybe the drive is >> the good >> part and the MB has fried components? > > In my experience (which, happily, seems mirrored by Google's recent > report), SMART is really just about useless. Don't rely upon it as a > true test of whether the hard drive is operating correctly or not. > > The errors you indicated earlier are indicative of a hard drive > failure, having suffered several of them myself in the past (at least > one from each major vendor, it would seem.) Swapping in another > drive, even temporarily, should allow you to determine if it really > is the drive or the motherboard that's been toasted. > > Gregory >
OK. Josh, I want that drive! In fact, _anybody_ with a cast off 40 G laptop drive, you can find me in the traffic island at Roscrans and Midway with a cardboard sign, "VIETNAM VET NEEDS 40 G HD TO SURVIVE -- GOD BLESS". (I can hear the drivers muttering "if I give it to him, he'll probably just put Linux on it!") -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-steer
