smartctl vs cat
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]
Re: smartctl vs cat
also sprach Hugh Saunders [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003.03.14.0221 +0100]: can anyone explain why the cat worked? it is entirely possible that reads work fine, just that writes don't stick. so say a given byte is 0xcf and when you read it, you get 0xcf, but when you write 0x45 to it, it either remains as 0xcf or goes to something whacky like 0x9e or whatever. if S.M.A.R.T. says the disk is dying, get the data off. you did that. good. now get a new disk. -- Please do not CC me when replying to lists; I read them! .''`. martin f. krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] : :' :proud Debian developer, admin, and user `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing a system Keyserver problems? http://keyserver.kjsl.com/~jharris/keyserver.html Get my key here: http://people.debian.org/~madduck/gpg/330c4a75.asc pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: smartctl vs cat
On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 02:58:19AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Hugh Saunders [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003.03.14.0221 +0100]: can anyone explain why the cat worked? it is entirely possible that reads work fine, just that writes don't stick. so say a given byte is 0xcf and when you read it, you get 0xcf, but when you write 0x45 to it, it either remains as 0xcf or goes to something whacky like 0x9e or whatever. that makes sense, i hadnt considered that cat only tests reading. if S.M.A.R.T. says the disk is dying, get the data off. you did that. good. now get a new disk. will do! hugh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
