Hi all,
I have an IBM Travelstar 20gig IDE HD model #IC25N020ATCS04-0 in a Red Hat 9.0 system. More info on the drive is here:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/tva/40_60.htm

This morning, kwrite says that changes I've made to files have been saved, but when I reopen the file, my changes are gone. Further, I can't open files for reading or reading/writing, even though nothing has changed with them permission-wise. It will work hundreds of times in a row, then just start failing. If I wait a little while, I can open them, then they start failing again.

This system is heavily abused: it's my development system, and it's been on 24 hours for at least 8 months straight, with some heavy-duty reading/writing. I've not noticed this before, but the above link says this drive (the ATCS, not ATCX) is only recommended for 333 hours on-time per month?!?!?!

Is there a utility I can use on Linux that tests whether my HD itself is okay? I've found some, but they all require boot floppies, and this system has no floppy drive (and no CD-ROM).

Thanks for any help or advice.

it sure sounds suspicious, and certain IBM drives are notorious for their failure rates (not sure if the one you mention is in that category, but with the infamous "8 hour per day" rating, it might be).do you notice that the drive is at all loud, or making any strange sounds, especially hard "clicking" or sort of rattling sounds?

it will be hard to test without a floppy. i would remove it and test it in another system that has a floppy drive with any diagnostic utilities provided by the manufacturer. i'm pretty sure IBM has hard disk testing software on their site.

p.s. it almost goes without saying, but before doing anything else i would immediately back up any important information on reliable media (if it's not backed up already).

Thanks, I'll check for suspicious noises. It's actually an embedded system so it's not too easy to just swap out the HDs, but if need be that's what I'll do. I back-up everything regularly, luckily, and did a full backup today.