warning: one or more disk are failing

liuchang2340 · 08-26-2009, 11:49 PM

Hello Everyone:
I'm using Fedora 11 system. Every time I enter my system , I got a warning message like that: one or more disk are failing. Double click the error message,"Palimpsest Disk Utility" window will appear. and red words "Last Test: Failed (Suspected of having handled damage)".
I think one of my disk may be checked error. But in fact they all work well in my Windows XP system. So my question is : What's wrong with my disk ,and how to fix it.
Thank you very much.

business_kid · 08-27-2009, 04:49 AM

2 things are possibhle, without knowing a thing about "Palimpsest Disk Utility".
1. If you have S.M.A.R.T. enabled in the BIOS, this can see damage before m$ will notice anything.

2. You have filesystem corruption. e2fsck will run automatic tests and fix silly stuff but if there's major stuff, it will act as you describe. Meanwhile, the disk will try to function. Close any open consoles or files in separate partitions, and you can run
/umount /partition
fsck -fcvy /dev/whatever
mount /partition

If the disk is bad, it will object to the 'y' and you will have to go through manually and answer prompts without it.

You could also do that for home, /opt, /home, perhaps even /var, if they are separate partitions. Best to run a check on / from the install disk. Use Ctrl_Alt_F2 and try to get a terminal.

mushroomboy · 08-27-2009, 06:21 AM

smartmontools helps with hdd status... You can run smart tests and display the current smart status. Such as if I run a test and want to see the changed status of my drive I would run 'smartctl -a /dev/sda' and it outputs this:

Code:

debian# smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and 7200.7 Plus family
Device Model:     ST3120827AS
Serial Number:    3MS01T0A
Firmware Version: 3.42
User Capacity:    120,034,123,776 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   6
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2
Local Time is:    Thu Aug 27 05:24:09 2009 CDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever 
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:                 ( 430) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        No General Purpose Logging support.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:        (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (  71) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   059   047   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       107840944
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   097   096   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   099   099   020    Old_age   Always       -       1386
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   083   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       234550758
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   075   075   000    Old_age   Always       -       22423
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   020    Old_age   Always       -       1400
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   042   061   000    Old_age   Always       -       42 (0 4 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   059   047   000    Old_age   Always       -       107840944
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
202 TA_Increase_Count       0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     22058         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

[edit] If you have Windows XP a good program for this is SmartFan, it does HDD checking as well. Though before you do this the standard FS checks should alwasy be done, this is just a good way to make sure your hdd is healthy.