hard drive failing?

[gamblor01]

I just installed F11 and got it all configured today. When gnome starts up it displays a disk warning and when I click it and scroll through the information, I see the messages shown in the attached images.

Does anyone have any further information about what these errors mean? The errors don't mean much to me except for "Your hard drive is failing. Buy a new one dummy!!!"

In any case -- it looks like I'm going to be getting a new hard drive soon (just in case). The drive it is marking as having bad sectors gets the most use, and has all of my Linux partitions on it. :(

[stumbles]

More importantly what does the system logs and/or dmesg say?

[i845_]

Back-to-back optical drive and hard disk problems? :eek: Sheesh.

Does anyone have any further information about what these errors mean?

Palimpsest appears to be warning you of an impending data disaster, based on information provided by the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring system built into your hard disk.

You could read up on S.M.A.R.T. here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.). For a list of known ATA S.M.A.R.T. attributes, see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes).

[gamblor01]

Back-to-back optical drive and hard disk problems? :eek: Sheesh.

Yeah -- of course right when I'm trying to purchase a house. Actually, we were under contract for one but we didn't love it...and then we found out that it is in a flood plain (and we would be required to get flood insurance) AND it may have asbestos in the ceiling. Thank goodness for option periods! ;)

Thanks for the links. I'll read up a bit there to see if I can figure out exactly what those errors mean. Also, it sounds like I'll be hitting up newegg for some hardware in the very near future. :(


EDIT: Actually I don't think the optical drive is failing at all; I have now burned a CD and DVD using my Ubuntu 9.04 and my F11 partitions. So it's just my 'main' partition (currently running Ubuntu 8.10) that has problems. The exact same hardware and same disc burn fine when I boot up other partitions. So the hard drive is definitely a hardware issue but I think the failure to burn stuff is a software issue. I guess I'll have to live with it for now, figure out the problem, or just reinstall.

[Glennzo]

I was getting the same error and had been since I installed F11 alpha. I believe that there are several bugzilla articles regarding Palimpsest's mis-behavior. Anyhow, if you select System > Preferences > Startup Applications and un-check disk notifications you won't get the disk failure notice any more.

[i845_]

@Glennzo

You bring new light to this topic.
While browsing the Internet last night, I came across this (http://blog.kagesenshi.org/2009/05/day-with-fedora-11-leonidas.html) page. Co-incidence? After reading your post, I'm not so sure.

(edit) Thanks a ton for the info.

@gamblor01

Take a look here (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1222650), here (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=220231) and here (http://johnson.homelinux.net/mywiki/Hard_Disk_Is_Failing). Your hard disk might be okay after all.
Backup your data, and then give smartmontools or GSmartControl (Linux.com article (http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/151023)) a spin. They should provide you with a more accurate and reliable diagnosis.

[Glennzo]

Yup. I think this Palimpsest thing is nothing more than a false alarm. Of course, keep in mind that I'm no expert. I boot Fedora, Ubuntu, Vista and Windows 7. The only OS waiving a red flag is Fedora. There are several threads over at my main hangout, Fedora Forum, about Palimpsest and error reports, so we're not the only ones.

[gamblor01]

Great! Thank you both Glennzo and i845 -- I guess I don't have to worry about this too much then. I went ahead and copied everything essential over to my other hard drive so now it is in two places. That should be enough redundancy for some time. I thought it would be strange that /dev/sdb was failing given that it is much newer than /dev/sda and runs at temperatures that are much cooler than that of /dev/sda (there is a current difference of 8 degrees Celsius).

I just went ahead and disabled the disk notifications for now. Time to do a little more exploring in F11! I seriously doubt I'll switch back from Ubuntu to Fedora as my distro of choice, but I always did like Fedora releases.

[i845_]

I thought it would be strange that /dev/sdb was failing given that it is much newer than /dev/sda and runs at temperatures that are much cooler than that of /dev/sda (there is a current difference of 8 degrees Celsius).

This is not necessarily true. A Samsung 40 GB ATA hard disk on one of my machines (Pango PL40/SP0411N, circa 2003) is still going fine, while a newer Seagate 200 GB ATA hard disk connected to the same machine (ST3200827A, circa 2007) went kaput sometime in March this year. Also, while excessive heat isn't good for a hard disk, a cooler hard disk doesn't necessarily have to be healthier than a slightly hotter one.

That said, I will still recommend a scan using smartmontools/GSmartControl. Alternatively, you could try out diagnostic tools that are provided by the manufacturer of your hard disk (e.g. SeaTools by Seagate, Data LifeGuard Diagnostics by Western Digital, etc.) After all, we could all be wrong about Palimpsest being wrong...

Regards.

[gamblor01]

This is not necessarily true...

Also, while excessive heat isn't good for a hard disk, a cooler hard disk doesn't necessarily have to be healthier than a slightly hotter one.

I agree. It's just that statistically speaking it's more likely to be in better condition if it is newer and runs at cooler temperatures. I am aware that is certainly not always the case.