Ubuntu

Back In Time freezes

Asked by Eric

Hi,
I have a SATA 80gb hard drive (sdb) on my desktop which I am trying to use for daily backups. My Ubuntu 500gb drive (sda) is formatted to ext4. The amount of data I want to back up is less than 30Gb
The second drive (sdb) is also formatted to ext4, when trying to run a backup the machine freezes at random points.
The only way to recover is a complete reboot.
If I re-format (sdb) to ext3 BIT runs without any problems.
I also have an external USB 80Gb drive (same type as sdb) formatted to ext4. When I run a back up using BIT using this drive I have no problems.
I have ensured that all the permissions for sdb have been set correctly. Cannot figure out why the system freezes when the local hard drive (sdb) is formatted to ext4
Any help would be appreciated.
Using ubuntu 14.04 with latest updates
Eric

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Germar (germar) said : 		#1

Are you sure, your drive is healty? Please run 'sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sdb' to start a selftest. This might took several hours. After it's done you can see the result with 'sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb'

Alternative you could test with the tool from your HDD's manufactor.

Main differences between Ext3 and Ext4 is the journal which causes more write attempts on the drive. If there are corrupt sectors in the range of the journal this could lead to very poor performance.

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Eric (maws-cybersmart) said : 		#2

I have done as you advised and run Seagate for DOS to test the drive, the long test passed with no errors. I also ran the smartctl long test and it also passed although there were some pre-fail items. I did a further test using Gsmartcontrol which showed some errors in red but I was unable to reproduce this result as Gsmartcontrol only ran once and now crashes every time I try to run it.
Does the formatting of the drive influence the test i.e should the test results be the same no matter whether the format is ext3 or ext4?

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.