Drive errors

[Billie Walsh]

Mani A wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Mark Fraser
> <kubuntu at mfraz.orangehome.co.uk> wrote:
>
>   
>> As an update, my computer locked up again this morning (nothing worked and
>> something was constantly accessing one of my drives). When I rebooted and
>> check smartctrl again I did see some errors:
>>
>> Error 176 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 2959 hours (123 days + 7 hours)
>> When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or
>> idle.
>>
>>     
>
> You cannot be sure. With seagate SATA drives, people get all kinds of
> problems due to a kernel or firmware issue. Actually it is a cross
> platform problem
>
> You can try disabling write-cache.
>
> #sudo hdparm -W0 /dev/sdb
>
>
> But your drive is dying apparently. Is it?
>
> Best
>
> A. Mani
>
>
>   
I may get slammed for this but......................

I'm not saying that your drive isn't failing. It may very well be, 
but.......................

There are some issues with SMART disk monitor. I've personally seen 
SMART report a dying disk that ran for three more years without fault or 
issue. According to SMART that disk drive was going to fail at any second.

Your mileage may vary of course but just be aware that SMART isn't 
_always_ right.

I've got three drives in this computer, a Seagate SATA, a Maxtor SATA 
and a Western Digital IDE drive. I've never had a moments problem with 
any of them. I run my computer 24/7 and all three drives are going on 
two and a half years old

-- 
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.