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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

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Old 04-06-2007, 02:08 PM   #1
0mn1z10n
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Know of an app to analyze a possibly failing HDD?


Well hey there. One of my drives has begun making odd sounds every few minutes that it didn't used to make. I'd like to know if there's an application I can install that will be able to tell me which hard drive it is that's having problems so I can replace that one. It's not happening frequently enough for me to tell which one is making the noise, unfortunately, but I just don't know what else to do to figure out what's wrong before it fails completely.
 
Old 04-06-2007, 02:16 PM   #2
cgjones
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I would check out smartmontools.
 
Old 04-06-2007, 02:40 PM   #3
0mn1z10n
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Cool! Thanks a bunch cgjones, that looks like it'll do the trick.
 
Old 04-06-2007, 04:39 PM   #4
Electro
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Go straight to the hard drive manufacture and download their utilities. Their utilities may be able to give you some information. Though if you think the drive might be failing, it is best to backup the data and plan on buying a new drive. IMHO, human senses are a lot better than S.M.A.R.T. when detecting hard drive failure.
 
Old 04-06-2007, 04:57 PM   #5
r00tb33r
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Electro
Go straight to the hard drive manufacture and download their utilities. Their utilities may be able to give you some information. Though if you think the drive might be failing, it is best to backup the data and plan on buying a new drive. IMHO, human senses are a lot better than S.M.A.R.T. when detecting hard drive failure.
speaking of S.M.A.R.T., is it any use if the BIOS prints that S.M.A.R.T. is DISABLED on boot?
for example on my last 2 motherboards there were no S.M.A.R.T. options in the CMOS setup program...
does S.M.A.R.T. still gather the bad sectors and other errors even when its disabled?
 
Old 04-06-2007, 05:00 PM   #6
cgjones
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From the smartmontools FAQ:
Quote:
My computer's BIOS has a SMART enable/disable setting. What does it do, and how should I set it?

Some type of BIOS can check the SMART health status of a disk at bootup: the equivalent of 'smartctl -H /dev/hd?'. This one-time check on bootup is done if the BIOS SMART setting is set to 'ENABLE', and is not done if the setting is set to 'DISABLE'.

If this one-time check is done, and the disk's health status is found to be 'FAIL', then typically the BIOS will display an error message and refuse to boot the machine.

For the proper functioning of smartmontools, either BIOS setting may be used.
 
Old 04-06-2007, 05:08 PM   #7
r00tb33r
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cgjones
From the smartmontools FAQ:
thanks, thats clear it up.
 
Old 04-06-2007, 07:21 PM   #8
J.W.
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If your hard drives make clicking sounds, then for all practical purposes they are on their last legs. Backup any data you don't wish to lose ASAP. Good luck with it
 
  


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