Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

HDD SMART Status: Disk has a few bad sectors

  • 21-11-2010 5:01pm
    #1
    PDD
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,019 ✭✭✭


    Hi Folks,

    When I connect an external HDD to my machine (Ubuntu 10.10) it will mount it and then when I view in it in Drive Utiliity the smart status says:

    Disk has a few bad sectors

    Now it has a green button beside it but if I view the details there are a few sections in red. Does this mean the HDD is knackered or can it be recovered by using a low level format to identify bad sectors etc.

    Dave


Comments

  • #2
    Mycroft H
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,313 ✭✭✭Mycroft H


    PDD wrote: »
    Hi Folks,

    When I connect an external HDD to my machine (Ubuntu 10.10) it will mount it and then when I view in it in Drive Utiliity the smart status says:

    Disk has a few bad sectors

    Now it has a green button beside it but if I view the details there are a few sections in red. Does this mean the HDD is knackered or can it be recovered by using a low level format to identify bad sectors etc.

    Dave

    How many bad sectors does it have???

    The main thing is to watch this number and make sure it doesnt increase. If it doesnt it probably means the disk suffered a shock in the past but is pretty ok now. If it does start increasing id back it up fast and think about replacing it.


  • #3
    William Powell
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,479 ✭✭✭William Powell


    I've a 5yo HDD in my XP laptop and it has a few bad clusters on it but passed the SMART tests on the partedmagic distro and has been working 2 years since it developed bad clusters. On the other hand I've seen drives with a couple of bad clusters that die within the week you just can't tell. imho if its minor shock damage then your stuck with the bad clusters but thats as far as it goes but if the disc surface is wearing out then its going to keep on getting worse.

    All you can do is suck it and see ;)


  • #4
    Mathiasb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 425 ✭✭Mathiasb


    Install smartmontools and run smartctl --all /dev/your_hdd and paste the output here in code tags.


  • #5
    Tillotson
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 218 ✭✭Tillotson


    Just want to stress the importance of a good backup system, really takes the worry out of hard disks failing.

    At home I use rsnapshot which takes a backup every night and rotates backups so I always have 1 monthly, 3 weekly and 6 daily backups. It uses hard-links so unless the data is changing significantly it doesn't take too much space. 15min setup.

    I've also used backuppc which is awesome. More suited to an office type setup. It can pull backups from Windows PCs over SMP and Linux using ssh and rsync. Nice web interface for allowing users to restore their own files.


Advertisement