Hard Drive Diagnostics? (Solved--Maybe)

[wayne1932]

A long time ago, there was a program called Spinrite put out by the Gibson Company which would check every byte on a hard drive, writing and rewriting it. I'm looking for something similar, I still have spinrite, but it only works for PATA drives not SATA.  I bought a used laptop, and it has a couple of times done something WEIRD.  I have lost some data (nothing important committed here yet) but can't tell exactly what happened.  

Once it wouldn't boot up, and advised me to run fsck, which I did and fixed some lost inodes.  But it has been running just fine for several days now, still I'm not sure if I had a temporary glitch, or it's ready to bite me in the backside.  

Is there a program for linux preferably in the repos that can check the health of a hard drive.  

[Ramchu]

These are in the repo

Bonnie++ is a benchmark suite that is aimed at performing a number of simple
tests of hard drive and file system performance.

GSmartControl - Hard disk drive health inspection toH
GSmartControl is a graphical user interface for smartctl
(from Smartmontools package), which is a tool for querying
and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and
Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives. It
allows you to inspect the drive's SMART data to determine
its health, as well as run various tests on it.

Note: Only ATA drives (both PATA and SATA) are supported for now.

hdsentinel
Hard Disk Sentinel Linux Edition
Hard Disk Sentinel -  examine the temperature and health information
(and more) of IDE, S-ATA (SATA II also), SCSI and USB hard disks
connected to motherboard or external controller cards.

[ThirdOfSix]

I read what you wrote about Spinrite not working on SATA drives and thought that I had used it on SATA drives before.

After a half hour of looking for the Spinrite disk, I started it on one of my other machines with a 500GB SATA drive.

It is running just fine as I write this.

It is version six.

The drive it is checking is a Western Digital drive connected via an external USB adapter.

Just to be sure, I'll try it later on one of my machines with an internal hardwired SATA drive.

Also, I too use GSmartControl  frequently and had very good luck with it.

In my case, it reports that I should immediately back up all data on most of my drives due to imminent failure.

Apparently it includes a check for the hours of use and compares that to the expected life span of the different drives as stated by the manufacturer.

Well, I get most of my drives from old machines in thrift stores and they are all way past their guaranteed lifespan and still running strong so I pretty much ignore that particular warning until they start making weird noises.

[Just17]

I also bought Spinrite many years ago .......  used it in three drives which I knew were a little 'dodgy', but were OK for what I was using them for ......  unimportant temporary storage of 'stuff' which I was highly unlikely to ever need.

Spinrite killed all three ......  and I never used it again.

BTW the 'dd' command can be used in a somewhat similar fashion .....  there are several verions of this in the repository.

[wayne1932]

Thanks guys,  I downloaded Gsmart and it seems to be telling me what I wanted to know. The ?? harddrive showed up unreadable at one spot-120 sectors.  Maybe I can put that between partitions, and get more life out of it.  Possibly was severely jarred sometime when it was active.

Re: spinrite.  I think I remember scrapping my disk sometime back.  Don't remember what version it was but I'm sure it was ancient.   

[Ramchu]

wayne1932,
If your problem is solved, then could you Please return to the original post and click on modify
and add Solved or Resolved to the thread tittle ?

Thanks !

[dvhenry]

I bought a used laptop, and it has a couple of times done something WEIRD.  I have lost some data (nothing important committed here yet) but can't tell exactly what happened.

Once it wouldn't boot up, and advised me to run fsck, which I did and fixed some lost inodes.

You should  first backup any data you need to save, then use a SMART monitoring program such as gsmart, (although I have not used that one) to monitor the health of the hard disk for a period of time, if you find an increasing number of errors over time you should replace the disk.

I realize I am stating what is likely to be obvious, but felt it should be stated for others who may find this thread by its title.

[wayne1932]

I have run gsamart a couple of times.  The read errors all seem o be in the same place on the disk.  If the laptop was badly jarred some time in the past when it was accessing that area, bingo scratches when the head contacted the disk.   Just for the experience I may try to make a small partition to include that place and then never use it.   Won't cost anything and may let me use the disk for a long time.   

[dvhenry]

A disk can have a problem with one 'section' of that disk and will automatically not use that 'section' it's unlikely that you would need to intervene.
It is not uncommon for some areas of a disk to become unusable, and the electronics on the disk and SMART will attempt to mark that area as unusable. However a failing disk will show up using a SMART monitoring program by checking it frequently.

If you your disk is not showing an increase in damaged sectors over time you should be safe (Don't hold me to that).

[dvhenry]

If the laptop was badly jarred some time in the past when it was accessing that area, bingo scratches when the head contacted the disk.

Any 'crash' like that will leave debris free in a fast rotating, highly accurate mechanical device, increasing damage to the disk and the data over a short period of time could be a result, and is likely. (A disk that has incurred  an impact heavy enough to cause any damage should not be trusted).