Hard disk failing

kevaljd · #1 6th June 2009, 02:36 PM

Hey people, I just tried the snapshot of F11 on my server, as soon as live cd showed up the gnome, there was a pop up, my battery is failing 42% something and my hard disk is failing. I thought maybe some error in live cd... (as it is beta).. I chked the notification icon and it showed up 3 sectors... I ignored that and went with the installation, formatting and creating file system, these pop ups showed "weird speed of indicators" as if it was on some super computer. It stopped with an error, i restarted.
I didnt see any bugs regrding this, just curious to know, is it fedora on my server or my server (hardware) that is failing on the system?

kevaljd · #2 6th June 2009, 02:48 PM

Sorry for double post.!

After writing the above post, fedora installed "smoothly" and quicker than I expected, however, I do see the same error "One or more disk failing" I chekced the icon and it is showing error on:
ID - 5, Attribute - Reallocated Sector Count, Value - 3 sectors, Status - Failing.

I believe my HDD has some errors (I dunno why, I feel convinced

)... Can anyone help me "correct" this error, please.

Thank You

revchris · #3 6th June 2009, 03:34 PM

I had the same thing on my workstation at work. I figured it was just a glitch. Now I'm not so sure

stevea · #4 6th June 2009, 03:46 PM

This might help you pinpoint the problem
smartctl -H /dev/sda

kevaljd · #5 6th June 2009, 03:55 PM

Code:

[root@localhost ~]# smartctl -H /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [i386-redhat-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

Hmmm.... that makes me feel better but still this icon is really scaring me, I want to start my server asap :-s
yea yea its my mistake to use F11 for my web server lol.
any ideas?

***glennzo*** · #6 6th June 2009, 07:38 PM

There are one or more problems with the Palimpsest disk tool. A few bug reports have been filed against it. I get the same errors every time I boot F11 but there actually is nothing wrong with my hard disk.

kevmif · #7 7th June 2009, 03:11 AM

SMART stores various statistics about your disks. I believe taht the Palimpset disk utility is being overly pedantic. All disks have errors - thats a fact of manufacturing. Thankfully the firmware that runs your hard drive is clever enough to be able to work around errors without you even noticing them. A disks condition is assessed by checking failure rates against predetermined threshold settings. Thats how SMART and other utilities assess the health of your disk.

If you dual boot Windows, install speedfan and check the SMART statistics there.

bsund · #8 9th June 2009, 09:52 AM

Are you sure that you have a fully updated F11?

I got that message some time ago and it was a bug that later got fixed.

***glennzo*** · #9 9th June 2009, 09:57 AM

Yes, I'm sure it's fully updated. Still get the error today, F11 release day. Last time I checked bugzilla it didn't appear that the bug had been fixed. Got any links that I can have a look at?

svank · #10 9th June 2009, 03:05 PM

Take a look at this bug. Like kevmif said, the program reporting your disk as failing is being very picky. Your hard drive is designed to work around a certain amount of bad sectors, but Palimpsest will complain if you have even one bad sector.

neogranas · #11 9th June 2009, 03:26 PM

I had this bug and it reported around 99% of my hard drive was in a failed state, but I somehow still managed to install Fedora on it. I figured it was a bug and found it in a report somewhere so I just went back to 10 for a little while longer because the video drivers weren't working that well either. I'm stoked to get it installed on 3 machines today.

***glennzo*** · #12 9th June 2009, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by svank

Take a look at this bug. Like kevmif said, the program reporting your disk as failing is being very picky. Your hard drive is designed to work around a certain amount of bad sectors, but Palimpsest will complain if you have even one bad sector.

OK, thanks. I'm confident that the drive is fine and would prefer to just stop Palimpsest somehow. For now, it tells me every time I log in so I just click OK and forget about it.

Reading the link and seeing that the issue was closed as "not a bug" to me seems just a brush off. The program shouldn't be that picky.

svank · #13 10th June 2009, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glennzo

OK, thanks. I'm confident that the drive is fine and would prefer to just stop Palimpsest somehow.

I'm not in F11 right now, so I can't check the exact names, but if you go to System>Preferences>(either Sessions or Startup Apps, or something similar), you can disable something to do with hard drives and Palimpsest will stop complaining when you log in.

I think in F12 you should be able to disable it on a drive-by-drive basis, which will be nicer if you have multiple hard drives.

Kuma · #14 10th June 2009, 04:33 AM

Thanks for the post! Glad I found this thread. I too am having the same "warning" Hard Drive Failing (bad sectors), which appeared on first boot up after the install of F11 on my Compaq Presario Laptop. I think I may leave F10 on my Desktop for now.