[ubuntu-za] Hard disk issues

[Bruce Pieterse]

On 28/06/2012 16:45, Tom Bamford wrote:
> On 28 June 2012 16:16, Charl Wentzel <charl.wentzel at vodamail.co.za> wrote:
>> Hi Guys
>>
>> I'm having more and more issues with my harddrive (I think).  My machine
>> seems to freeze for short periods of time for no apparent reason.  Looking
>> at the syslog, there appears to be an issue with my hard drive.  It's only a
>> few months old so I'm quite surprised about this.
>>
>> <snipped>
>>
>> Anything I can do to improve the situation?  Unfortunately, replacing the
>> harddrive at this stage is not an option.
>>
>> Regards
>> Charl
> Hi Charl
>
> Replace the drive. It's dying along with everything stored on it. If
> it's only a few months old you can return it under warranty. Drive
> failures are common in the first weeks/months of first use.
>
> Regards
> Tom
>
Hi Charl,

I've had a similar issue before and I'm currently running two drives
with reallocated sector counts for months without problems. Those parts
of the drives are marked off as unusable anyway, so data won't be stored
on it. I would recommend weekly or even daily backups with something
like deja-dup in case your hard drive does fail eventually.

Here a two things based on past experience that can help you diagnose
the problem further:

 1. Normally a lack of power to your drives will make the drive turn off
    and on again and it can alternate between short or long periods
    before it actually does switch off and on again. I had this problem
    three days ago with a 300W power supply I kept that originally could
    power four drives but then I started receiving similar messages in
    syslog. The 300W power supply worked fine for a year or two with
    four drives. Since my 600W power supply blew over the weekend, I
    tried connecting two drives (root and home hard drives) to it and
    guess what, I had the same issue. The way to detect this is as soon
    as your machine freezes, listen very closely to the area in your
    tower where your hard drives are located to hear if the hard drives
    are spinning up and then reading (normally it clicks and then you
    can hear the heads reading data). If it is switching on and off, I
    would recommend getting a better power supply, perhaps a 400W or
    600W (this is overkill though if you have only one to four drives
    but is suggested if you do have a graphics card as well).

    You can also check for dust (or dust bunnies as my dad would say) in
    your power supply which could also be affecting airflow. I normally
    clean my computer every 6 months either by using a hand-held blower
    if available or manually with a paint brush (38.1mm is good). Since
    the power supply is out of warranty I would disconnect the power,
    remove the 24pin connector from the motherboard, take it outside and
    open the casing and remove the fan from the side of case and clean
    it thoroughly. If you do attempt to go the manual route please, be
    careful.[1]

 2. I spoke to a technician at work about the reallocated sector counts,
    and he advised me that normally this is an issue when hard drives
    are stacked on top of each other and the temperature of the drive
    below it affects the circuit board above it. So, ensure that there
    is enough space between the hard drives (one slot between drives
    should be OK). Have a look at the Airflow Temperature value under
    the SMART Data values in disk utility, it should be around 36
    degrees. I added space between the drives two weeks ago and my home
    directory drive in the past had a constant value of 52 degrees and
    now its 36 degrees, big improvement!

I too had brand new drives when this started occurring but swapping out
the power supply alleviated the problem after like a month of online
researching thinking it was a bug with the kernel.

Let me know how it goes!

[1] http://www.fonerbooks.com/power.htm

-- 
All the best,

Bruce

FSF Member 10674 / The FSF is a charity with a worldwide mission to advance software freedom / Join the Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=10674

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