[arch-general] [OT]Disk showing too many bad sectors - is it going to fail ?

[Aljosha Papsch]

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:
>> 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:
>> 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 ?