I wrote: > If you're curious, smartmontools can be useful to extract substantial details > from the drive. It's not easy finding a binary package. I happen to have > PowerPC, Intel 32-bit and Intel 64-bit installers, built with MacPorts.
Email me offline if you want a copy. It's tiny. Easily emailed. Macports built the package installer and the DMG. The basic sequence is: smartctl -s on /dev/disk0 [or whatever disk it is that you're interested in] And then either: smartctl -x /dev/disk0 [all plus extra information including temp tracking] or smartctl -a /dev/disk0 [all information, as some drives don't support -x] What I'll bet is you see a lot of ECC events, if it tracks them, lots of read errors, and pending sectors. The physicist who wrote smartmontools has elaborate documentation on how you can even locate each of the bad sectors and find out exactly what file or structure is located in that sector. And then how to try and read it and relocate it. It's very involved. Since it's just a TM backup, I'd just image it, and put it on a shelf. You could try doing a short or extended offline test AFTER you have your backup. They are read-only tests, so they are non-destructive, but if the disk is dying the test could well send it over the edge. But might be useful if you do have a warranty claim to make with someone. smartctl -t short /dev/disk0 smartctl -t long /dev/disk0 Upon hitting return it will tell you what time it will be done. I don't recommend checking until then. I do recommend going to Energy Saver and telling it not to spin down disks if possible. You don't want that happening while the test is occurring. I will say, in all cases of bad sectors I've had, neither short nor extended tests proceed terribly far. They get aborted by the firmware itself due to read errors it can't correct. And funny enough, this does NOT inherently qualify as a pre-fail category event! Nope, as far as the manufacturers are concerned, a certain percent of read errors are normal. Haha. So the only way to get past this is to zero the drive, which will thus remove the bad sectors from use entirely. So make sure you get a screen shot of the -a or -x option before you do a zeroing, as the next time you poll SMART it will show no more pending sectors (pending to be removed from use permanently) since once removed, they are no longer pending. Anyway.... Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
