Hard drive failing! Please help!

mahdif · 02-26-2009, 04:17 AM

I issued smartctrl under suselinux and it says my "maxtor sata drive is failing! Backup and replace"
Thetwo critical smart parameters are seek error rate and spin retry count.

What should I do now?

{BBI}Nexus{BBI} · 02-26-2009, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mahdif

...[snip] Backup and replace [/snip]...

Do as instructed.

Drakeo · 02-26-2009, 06:47 AM

This tells me smartdrive is enabled in bios and suse is reading the out put and this means there is some dead sectors. and this coould be fixed by backing up the data and running maxtors boot disk and running there programs. At that point the out come of maxtor Diagnostic and repair test will help you decide . either it will be fixed or. turn it off in bios and wait for the drive to fail.

salasi · 02-26-2009, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mahdif

..."maxtor sata drive is failing! Backup and replace"..the two critical smart parameters are seek error rate and spin retry count.

What should I do now?

Assuming that you want to loose all your data, ignore the message and carry on as usual. If, on the other hand, you want to have a chance of keeping your data, follow the instructions.

(If you can't get a new disk immediately, do at least make a backup immediately.)

It is, in the end, your choice.

jiml8 · 02-26-2009, 09:56 AM

Further diagnosis is required before choosing to scrap the drive. However, you should begin by assuming the message is accurate, and immediately back up the drive.

After backing up, run the command smartctl -a on that drive and post the results here.

The drive IS reporting errors, but the question right now is whether the errors are repairable or not, and whether they herald the death of the drive (they certainly may, but they also could be telling you - for instance, that your two year old banged against the computer while chasing the cat and caused a head crash - and this would be recoverable).

jiml8 · 02-26-2009, 09:57 AM

Further diagnosis is required before choosing to scrap the drive. However, you should begin by assuming the message is accurate, and immediately back up the drive.

After backing up, run the command smartctl -a on that drive and post the results here.

The drive IS reporting errors, but the question right now is whether the errors are repairable or not, and whether they herald the death of the drive (they certainly may, but they also could be telling you - for instance, that your two year old banged against the computer while chasing the cat and caused a head crash - and this would be recoverable).