[sf-lug] semi-OT: help with dying disk

Fri Mar 14 08:29:19 PDT 2008

I could have sworn that Kristian had brought up an article about Ubuntu killing hard drives on laptops awhile back but I couldn't find it in my emails. I did a quick google search and the problems your experiencing (power and HD failure) seem to be described here....

http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/laptop-hardrive-killer-bug-how-to-discover-whether-you-are-affected/

Blake Haggerty
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-----Original Message-----
From: matt.price at utoronto.ca 
To: "sf-lug at linuxmafia.com" ;
Sent: Mar 13, 2008 07:52:04 PM
Subject: [sf-lug] semi-OT: help with dying disk

hi folks, 

i htink i may have asked a similar question before, since this is the 
second time in 3 months that i've had a disk drive die, and no, i 
apparently still haven't learned my lesson. 

the hard drive in my laptop is dying, with messages of this ilk: 

----------- 
root at ubuntu:~# tail /var/log/messages 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.876000] 08 21 3f e0 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.876000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. 
Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.876000] end_request: I/O error, 
dev sda, sector 136396768 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.876000] ata1: EH complete 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.876000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 
195371568 512-byte hardware sectors (100030 MB) 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.876000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write 
Protect is off 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.880000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write 
cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.880000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 
195371568 512-byte hardware sectors (100030 MB) 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.880000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write 
Protect is off 
Mar 14 02:28:55 ubuntu kernel: [17232.880000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write 
cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 
----------- 

i'm currently at this point: 
i've dug up an ubuntu live cd & managed to run fsck on the root 
partition on this machine. there were lots of errors but i just said 
yes to everything it wanted to do and in the end, when i mounted the 
repaired partition, there were only a couple of dozen files in the 
lost+found. so i immediately started rsyncing to my backup (too 
late!! i know)& have found that in general, i can go for about a 
gigabyte before getting these errors, at which point rsync eventually 
dies. i have this feeling (likely wrong) that it doesn't always stop 
in the same places -- that is, that it's not necessarily that the disk 
has a hole where the file's supposed to be, but that it's just tired. 
so as regards recovery, i wanted to know whether there is some kind 
of strategy for reducing the strain on the disk -- it feels to me as 
though it's slowly dying but it might last longer if i treat it gently 
(i have no idea whether this is remotely true or even possible). 

that's the most important question. 

then i have a second one, regarding a new disk. from the looks of it, 
$150 will now buy either 200 gigs of 7200 RPM 2.5" disk, or 250 gigs 
of 5400 RPM. any idea how the speed difference is likely to affect 
both speed and power consumption on my laptop? this is a dell d820 
laptop with a core duo cpu, so it's fairly quick by my standards, but 
of course i wouldn't mind it being faster; however, it's also a 
terrible power hog under linux, currently (with what i believe is a 
5400 rpm disk) barely staying up for an hour on battery power. 

so i wondered, any comments on the likely speed/power tradeoff, and 
also any hints about increasing disk lifetime? this is the first 
laptop drive that's failedo n me, and i'm wondering whether it's just 
bad luck, a bad manufacturer, or possibly some defect in the way that 
disk access is managed under recent versions of ubuntu. 

so thanks much!! 

matt 

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