Re: [Hampshire] Dead/Dying HDD

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Author: Adrian Bridgett
Date:  
To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Dead/Dying HDD
On Wed, Dec 6, 2006 at 07:04:45 +0000 (+0000), Sean Gibbins wrote:
> Which may be available out of the box from your distro, or if not is
> available with Knoppix, or can easily be made available via a boot disc
> of some sort. You need to run it for 12+ hours ideally, although it
> should be apparent reasonably early on if there are errors surfacing.


Just FYI, I've spotted three bad SIMMs (all at different times) by
running memtest for only a couple of minutes (one slow test that's
all). So whilst you definitely _should_ run it for hours, it is
certainly capable of detecting problems much faster.

Personally I'd look at memtest quickly, then "smartctl -a /dev/hda"
quickly to check the disk (or do a "find / > /dev/null 2>&1" and look for
errors such as "SectorNotFound", then go back for a long memtest.

Adrian
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