I checked with Palimpset hard disk utility and found out that there are 28 bad sectors.I have read many pages on internet about Palimpset bugs.I am not sure if my harddisk is going to fail.I installed smartmontools and the GUI Gsmart control and this is the output.Should I backup my data? I also checked from windows and there are no bad sectors and HDTune reports that the HD health is 97%.
Try hddhealth and speedfan in windows too and see what gives. The reallocated sector count should be zero - or as close as - and definitely not increasing over time, which is a good indication of a disk going bad. How's the performance btw? Reallocated sectors can cause a slowdown. Mrk
I have 4 partitions on 1 disk. 1.Windows XP 2.Data 3.Ubuntu ext3 4.Swap I checked with CHKDSK there were no bad sectors. I checked with HDtune the result is in the pic all green no bad sectors.But it still says I got 28 reallocated sector count.I do not know how to interpret the results.The performance is the same as before .
Hello cet, All HD's have extra (spare) sectors to replace the bad one's. Of coarse the number of spares is limited and varies between drive manufactures and drive size. "I checked with HDtune the result is in the pic all green no bad sectors.But it still says I got 28 reallocated sector count.I do not know how to interpret the results.The performance is the same as before ." That's because the bad sectors have already been flagged (as non-existent) and re-mapped to the spare sectors. IMHO 28 reallocated sectors is nothing to worry about, I have an 8yr old drive that has 200. If your drive starts losing sectors at a fast rate then I'd worry. Read & Write errors are another story....Worry.....the HD is ready to fail. BTW, there's no guarantee on HD's life, I've seen drives that tested perfect and died an instant death.
Chkdsk is next to worthless because M$ doesn't document really how it works, doesn't open the source code, etc. Further, none of the error messages are very helpful. Worst of all, it can't do anything with Linux filesystems. The best thing to use is what you did initially -- the S.M.A.R.T monitoring built into all modern hard drives. The "smartmontools" utility that many Linux distros utilize is nothing but a way to access the SMART data and it's about the best info you're going to get. The problem, however, can be interpreting it correctly as the values vary depending on the drive model. One thing is certain, however, and that is that if you have 1 or more bad sectors, your drive is on its way out. It's just a matter of how long it will last. And, yes, you should definitely begin backing it up now. Another tool to use is badblocks. It will actually scan the disk and give detailed info about which blocks are bad, etc.. Read this wiki. It provides a lot of good info on drive health, bad blocks, and how to interpret the results on Linux. EDIT: Also I would run a test with smartctl. Open a terminal and do this: Code: sudo smartctl --test=long /dev/sda Give it a few hours and check the results by typing: Code: sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
So what do you recommend to me,should I change the drive immediately or should I wait and watch the reallocated number.(if it goes up then it is time to change?) This hard disk is only 17 months old.
Watch the number, I say - and make sure your data is backed up. If it starts climbing, consider replacing. Mrk
hello cet just back up your data time to time you can never can say the time your hardisk life is about i got a hardisk 1994 40 Gb samsung still working it got many bad sectors i dont remember the number now but its more than 15-20% still i am running astaro gateway on it my entire network is on it till date it stop install gateway or any other i gonna use it as backup or as transfer drive till its last breath...... here i see many hard disk in very bad condition and they last more than 5 years depend on usage and new ones we fail in week and so bad sector in not big concern for me what scar me more hurting the spindles of hardisk people throw their usb drives sata on bed
sorry i bought some were between 2000-2002 when i was in 10-12 standard school dont remember exact time thanks for correction
Another tool not available in the repos but free for Linux is hdsentinel. Just download it, make it executable and start it with sudo ./hdsentinel. It gives the following clear output for my harddisks: Code: Hard Disk Sentinel for LINUX console 0.03 (c) 2008-2009 info@hdsentinel.com Start with -r [reportfile] to save data to report, -h for help Examining hard disk configuration ... HDD Device 0: /dev/sda HDD Model ID : Maxtor 6Y120P0 HDD Serial No: Y34449ME HDD Revision : YAR41BW0 HDD Size : 117247 MB Interface : IDE/ATA Temperature : 37 °C Health : 62 % Performance : 92 % Power on time: 319 days, 2 hours, 15 minutes Est. lifetime: 578 days HDD Device 1: /dev/sdb HDD Model ID : SAMSUNG HD252KJ HDD Serial No: S0NJJDWQ108187 HDD Revision : CM100-12 HDD Size : 258038 MB Interface : S-ATA II Temperature : 37 °C Health : 100 % Performance : 100 % Power on time: 166 days, 22 hours Est. lifetime: more than 1000 days BTW: Another nice tool that gives an excellent overview of your hardware is inxi . Starting it with inxi -F gives:
