Public bug reported: Binary package hint: gnome-disk-utility
When Karmic is released, perhaps 20% of Ubuntu users will be told that their disks are about to fail. This could amount to millions of people. They will get a alert message every time they boot/log in. Based on my reading of the only published studies that I can find (see below), at least half of those warnings* will be false positives in the sense that those disks would function reliably for a year or more. However, many people will take the warning seriously and will throw out their computer or replace their disks. Some will do it badly and will lose data as a result. Many will spend time and money. [* Half of the warnings may be correct, under the best circumstances, when someone does proper statistics. Probably, gnome-disk-utility does not do nearly that well.] Does Canonical want to be responsible for this happening? Personally, I'd be concerned that some active lawyer would try a class action lawsuit. References: http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/smart/tech_papr/HamerlySmartPaper.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15849g/readings/hughes02.pdf ** Affects: gnome-disk-utility (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- false positives https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/422153 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
