Almost everytime I boot Asus g2k-a1 with a well used (maybe previously abused?) HTS5410809SA00 drive, fsck fails exit status 4 normally.
Is my HD getting toasted or could it still have a virus from the banished M$ XPro days?

Have run MHDD {Full Erase; from sector 0 to 156037621} numerous times to wipe the SATA drive, btw dban fails to run!
I set-up all the partition for multi-boot with Gparted, then reformat / [again as ext3] & swap each time just to make sure the distro loads & installer is happy.
Am sharing /home, each distro user is name of the distro so I can see All distros I have already installed on the particular sda#. I use webmail.

Get problem even with normal restarts; Kubuntu 8.1, Mandriva, Mepis 8 b6, Mint, Fedora10, most of time have to run a manual fsck on / partition!
NOT experiencing fsck on oSuSE boots that I recall (??)

All messages on booting & shutdown appear normal to me; OK, or done. Any failures or skipped=As expected for my hardware configuration!

1. Filesystem type?
2. Use smartctl with different options to test your drive (use live CD for that). Post output

3. Check Bios settings

SATA ?

Sharing /home will cause all types of problems

Why is fsck running every time you boot? Watch your shutdowns closely. Are your partitions being closed down cleanly? If not what is happening in shutdown where they are not shutting down cleanly?

Another thing to check is how often you have told fsck to run. Use the tune2fs command (as root) to display how often fsck is supposed to be run during normal usage. The command is:

tune2fs -l /dev/hda1

or whatever partition you are having problems with. Check these parameters:

mount count:
maximum mount count:
last checked:
check interval:

See:
man tune2fs

---------------------
Steve Stites

For practice I ran smartctl [No errors] on different machine, but unable to Ctrl copy &/or paste the outputshort condensed version smartctl

SMART over=all health assessment test result=PASSED

Error # occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 831 hours 34 days + 15 hours.
#'s 181, 182, 183, 184, 185
ER 40 ST 51, SC Od, SN c2, CL d9, CH 2b, DH e1
UNC @ LBA =0x012bd9c2 = 19651010

All BIOS appears OK to me, HD set as 1st boot, is only SATA HD on my Laptop
Would explain, but main / partitions are checked more often than I can screw up /home. Each distro is in effect a separate folder on that partition

As far as I can tell shutdowns are normal, what exactly should i look for??
Will run tune2fs, but my counts seemed off as /home was indicated to have been mounted 40 times, but was really only maybe 10 total boots on the laptop at that point since erasing HD [mhdd] & re-installing 3 distros.

My question exactly as / (for Kubuntu8.1, Mepis8b5 & Fedora10} sometimes the /home partition would require fsck before I could boot {THE METHOD DURING /BEFORE BOOTING COMPLETES {automatic File System check?? disabled by tune2fs?}
See above post (#3)

Using LiveCD, on an unused partition (formatted w/ Gparted, nothing installed yet)
mount count: 16
maximum mount count: 25
last checked: Mon Dec 1 19:35:06 2008
check interval: 15552000 ( 6 months)
On partition I know had problems 2, 35, Mon Dec 8 18:01:06 2008
another one 5, -1 Check interval 0 (<none>)
[/quote]
NOTE: All Hitachi Drive Fitness tests (Quick, Advanced, Excerciser)= Operation completed successfully Disposition Code 0x00 {repeatedly}

* Q Should I try a low level format of the HD (vs mhdd Full erase?) ?*
and then re-install latest releases of my favorite GNU/Linux distros

Hi,

You are running 'fsck' as a single user? You can use a LiveCD or your install cd to run the 'fsck' on a unmounted filesystem. That way no user but you will have access to the filesystem.

After I formatted drive as 'gpt' vs 'ms-dos' the frequent fsck seems to have quit. Drive was restored to 'ms-dos' to load public beta test of Windows 7, and GNU/Linux distros were reinstalled. Not sure why this would solve problem ?