The hard disk makes some funny noises (clicking, dangling, ...) and you wonder why some files are missing, though the disk is still "useable". Linux should throw a bunch of errors at boot time, but Windows (98) continues with its work until something crashes. Partha Chowdhury schrieb am So 17. Okt, 2010 16:55 CEST:

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 01:48:06PM +0100, Mauro Santos wrote:

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If you can, try overwriting the whole disk with dd, or test it with badblocks using the write and readback test and see if anything changes. The not so worst case is that you caught an impending disk faillure before it caused trouble and you already have a backup, the best case is that you find out those values are bogus and should not be taken into account.

i overwrote the whole disk with ddrescue -f /dev/zero /dev/sdb.After one and a half hours later it stopped with the message "no space left on device" - i guess it indicates no problem ?

i also tried the badblocks program with -w option. It took a long time 5+ hours but did not report a bad sector.

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 12:17:50PM -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:

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There have been a number of firmware changes/updates for seagate drives over the past 3 years and several "bad runs" of disks. Check the seagate support site and make sure you have the latest firmware for your drive. I have had the bad sector errors - sometimes a true failure, sometimes not. Just backup, monitor and if you continue to get the errors, drop of $50 on a new 1T drive.

I checked the seagate site and there is no firmware upgrade for this model. On further googling, i found that seagate is only offering firmware upgrades for 7200.12 model onwards.

Now to be absolutely sure, i downloaded the seatools program and it ran a short and long test which both said PASSED.

Inspite of all these, gsmartcontrol shows the same.

What are the indications before a disk is going bad which a normal user can catch with bare eyes and ears ?