22/08/2004
Fixing (?) a hard disk with errors
A couple of days ago I found out that one of my 200GB JB Western Digital drives had some errors. While trying to access certain paths under linux (with reiserfs) I always got a kernel panic in the same directories/files. The disk is still under warranty since it was bought on march 2003 (WD has 3 years warranty for it’s JB model disks) but I wondered if I could do anything by myself to fix it.
Looking inside WD’s website I’ve found out a very usefull tool called DLG Diagnostic that you can use to check on the disk. So, that was the first step…to check if the disk did have errors.
I downloaded the ALWAYS usefull Ultimate Boot CD which includes the utility of WD inside and MANY MANY others. I booted with the cd..fired up the utility and started checking. The quick test told me the disk had errors and if I wanted to repair them. Sure I did…so I let it finish the quick test. It took about 9 minutes. In the main menu of the program there is an option called extended test…so I fired up that one too. While spinning the disk and going from sector to sector it hang a while at sector 151…hmmmm.
It kept going for about an hour and when finished it told me that the disk had errors. “Press R to correct them” ->> RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
It told me it had 10 errors. But I wasn’t so sure it had fixed them so I ran the extended test again. 5 errors. And again…3 erros…And again 1 error. And again…. 0 errors. YEAH!
After the Extended test option there is a “low-level format” option that fills drive with 0s. I had already backed up my data so I fired up that option. 13 Hours to finish…wow.
Results after it finished ? No errors whatsoever…no test hanging at sector 151 and the drive is perfectly clean. At least that’s what I think…I will test today and report later. Since this disk was part of a raid array and that array is now corrupt I am planning to fiddle around with LVM.
I also feel really jealous of my friend patroklos because he is flying today to Tokyo, Japan to present a paper of his. Damn I want to go to Japan too. snif.
Filed by kargig at 13:05 under General
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