hello, I have a hdd which i suspect id dieing [yes i have burnt cds of any important stuf] this drive is in a windows box, so stuck in knoppix cd for diagnostics.
cat /dev/hda >/dev/null gives no output [no errors?] -me thought that would be a good indication that all sectors of the disk are readable. But im not convinced so tried smartctl. smarctl -x /dev/hda gives nasties such as irq timeout, status timeout, drive not ready for command, read failure, input/output error. sounds happy doesnt it! the disk can be replaced -im convinced its dead now! but why did the cat work successfully?? would i have seen errors if i hadnt directed to /dev/null? [well if i could read them fast enough while the garbage is scrolling] the prob with cat without the redirect is the beeping is far to annoying and even if i use setterm -blengh 0 before hand, the beeping starts fairly soon anyway [i guess this is to do with the random data from the hdd comin across the right escape sequence to re-enable the bell? -chances are fairly small i would have thought] i thought i should be ok as using > in that context diverts the main output not standard error can anyone explain why the cat worked? thanks hugh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]