Re: [gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk
On Thu, Jan 02 2014, walt wrote: On 01/01/2014 03:28 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Wed, Jan 01 2014, walt wrote: On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail gradually/gracefully. They all just stop working, usually when I power the machine on for the first time in the morning. What warning is the disk giving you of early failure? First it wouldn't mount in during startup. Then I tried switching the USB ports on the desktop and rebooted. It mounted but fsck took forever with pauses. The open-source culture in general seems to frown upon promotion of proprietary software (as opposed to proprietary hardware) so I usually avoid recommending proprietary software. But, based on reports I consider reliable (how's them for weasel words!) I'd suggest that Spin-Rite has a chance of restoring that drive to normal function. (Has a chance == more weasel words). Anyway, consider buying Spin-Rite here: https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm My own hard drives usually fail catastrophically within the the first month, so I just return them for replacement under warranty. But if I ever have an older drive fail I will certainly use Spin-Rite before giving up hope. Very interesting. I plan to buy the new disk since the old one is old, I can use the extra space (750GB -- 2TB), and the price is right. But I may get spin-rite anyway; the author's explanation of how it works was good. thanks, allan
[gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk
On 01/01/2014 03:28 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Wed, Jan 01 2014, walt wrote: On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail gradually/gracefully. They all just stop working, usually when I power the machine on for the first time in the morning. What warning is the disk giving you of early failure? First it wouldn't mount in during startup. Then I tried switching the USB ports on the desktop and rebooted. It mounted but fsck took forever with pauses. The open-source culture in general seems to frown upon promotion of proprietary software (as opposed to proprietary hardware) so I usually avoid recommending proprietary software. But, based on reports I consider reliable (how's them for weasel words!) I'd suggest that Spin-Rite has a chance of restoring that drive to normal function. (Has a chance == more weasel words). Anyway, consider buying Spin-Rite here: https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm My own hard drives usually fail catastrophically within the the first month, so I just return them for replacement under warranty. But if I ever have an older drive fail I will certainly use Spin-Rite before giving up hope.
[gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk
On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail gradually/gracefully. They all just stop working, usually when I power the machine on for the first time in the morning. What warning is the disk giving you of early failure?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk
On Wed, Jan 01 2014, walt wrote: On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail gradually/gracefully. They all just stop working, usually when I power the machine on for the first time in the morning. What warning is the disk giving you of early failure? First it wouldn't mount in during startup. Then I tried switching the USB ports on the desktop and rebooted. It mounted but fsck took forever with pauses. Then I shut down the system and unplugged the drive. allan
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk
gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Wed, Jan 01 2014, walt wrote: On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail gradually/gracefully. They all just stop working, usually when I power the machine on for the first time in the morning. What warning is the disk giving you of early failure? First it wouldn't mount in during startup. Then I tried switching the USB ports on the desktop and rebooted. It mounted but fsck took forever with pauses. Then I shut down the system and unplugged the drive. allan Can you check it with smartmontools? I guess if it can't be mounted tho, it doesn't really matter about the rest. That sort of makes it hard to rescue the data on it. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk
On Wed, Jan 01 2014, Dale wrote: gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Wed, Jan 01 2014, walt wrote: On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail gradually/gracefully. They all just stop working, usually when I power the machine on for the first time in the morning. What warning is the disk giving you of early failure? First it wouldn't mount in during startup. Then I tried switching the USB ports on the desktop and rebooted. It mounted but fsck took forever with pauses. Then I shut down the system and unplugged the drive. allan Can you check it with smartmontools? I guess if it can't be mounted tho, it doesn't really matter about the rest. That sort of makes it hard to rescue the data on it. Dale The important data on the disk is also on another computer (or two). I do want to buy the replacement disk to again have redundancy. allan
