The periodic e2fsck of my hard disk returned errors for the
first time, about a dozen defective inodes, all repairable. I
bought this computer 6 years ago.

Where can I find the errors? They aren't in any file in
/var/log; dmesg doesn't return them; smartctl reports no
errors. I was busy during boot, didn't write them down.

What is the trajectory of this drive? Is this the beginning
of a steep or shallow decline, or is it a fluke?

eMachines 725-4520
Western Digital Scorpio Blue Serial ATA model WDC WD2500BEVT-22A23T0 size 250 GB

Did you run smartctl test?

Smart mails its reports to the root user: try looking in /var/mail/root or search for a mail folder if that doesn't exist.

Smart has to be configured to run tests periodically for this. Some distros may set it up this way by default, some require manual setup.

The most common cause of this type of problem is when the system shuts down without umounting your partitions. Such things as turning off the machine without going through shutdown or a power failure can cause these problems. If fsck repaired all of the bad inodes without reporting any bad blocks then your hard drive suffered no permanent damage.

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Steve Stites

Honestly, given that it's 6 years old, and that you saw ANY errors, I'd act immediately. Since hard drives (and SSD's) are so cheap these days, I'd err on the side of caution. Grab a new drive, and do a PLANNED migration. Take the opportunity to upgrade to the latest distro (if you're not there), and get things moved over in an orderly fashion.

When I do this with my laptop, I'll typically grab a cheap USB enclosure, and shove the old drive in there, after taking a backup. Format and install on the new drive, and test my backup by doing a restore. Anything fails? You've got the old (but still WORKING) drive to copy files from.

I was getting ready to reply, but what I had in mind TBone said better than I ever could.

On my computer (all computers?) Smart also has to be set in the BIOS as well as having the daemon running.

1 members found this post helpful.

Almost every OEM maker of drives offer a way to run factory diags. Many of these are stand along disc based diags that provide the best tests and diags for that drive. If you can't get OEM then try ultimage boot cd if you don't want to run simple smart diags.

RandomTroll,

Scroll down the page and download/burn the .iso image for Hiren's Boot CD:
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Boot from the CD and use one of the Hard Disk Tools, such as SmartUDM or one of the WD Tools listed here:

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Thanks for all your answers. The only WD diags I can find run from Windoze or DOS. The BIOS doesn't support Smart.

The touchpad worked erratically from the start; the CD/DVD drive stopped burning a few years ago; I'm on the second keyboard and broken 2 keycaps; the audio chip has started working erratically; the screen has started working erratically. Thus, I consider replacing the entire computer. I already use the drive from its predecessor in an outboard enclosure for backup.