Ubuntu

hard drive mystery

Asked by Daniel Brumbaugh-Keeney

Within the course of the last week, several strange events have occured.
First, Ubuntu failed to shut down properly. I didn't notice it until the next day. The screen was black, and there was no response to any input. I cut the power to turn it off. It turned on normally without any message.
Second, while booting several days later, The computer made a significant noise and gave a message of hard drive failure. This was before it had reached the grub boot menu. I turned it off, and the turned it back on a minute later, when it started up normally.
Third, I dual-boot Windows XP, which upon starting was nonresponsive. The desktop was displayed normally, but while the mouse moved, it did not respond to clicks or the keyboard.
I have not had any of these problems prior or since, and their proximity in time makes me wonder; Are these events related? Is there something I should do? I appreciate any assistance.

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Ariel Cabral
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Best Ariel Cabral (acabral1961) said : 		#1

I think my friend that your hard drive (or their controller) is going to die, its ugly to say, but the symptoms are clear enought.
In my opinion, you must avoid to use them until you have a new one to make the replacement and then, use the new one to make a backup of your data.
Hope this help

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Savvas Radevic (medigeek) said : 		#2

How old is your computer? maybe it is a hardware failure (hard drive or motherboard?) or power supply failure.
Try putting an Ubuntu Live CD and booting from the CD - does everything work as expected from the Live environment?

Make sure you have enabled S.M.A.R.T. in your BIOS settings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
(Don't ask me how, I don't know every bios, figure out a way by reading the manual of your motherboard :) )

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Daniel Brumbaugh-Keeney (db-keen) said : 		#3

I've installed smartmontools and <http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/>, and believe SMART is activated. I've arranged for regular backups, but have put off replacing hardware. Thanks to both of you.

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Daniel Brumbaugh-Keeney (db-keen) said : 		#4

@Savvas: Seeing as it's working well at the moment, and even after the failure, it worked fine a minute later, I doubt I'll have opportunity to test if the LiveCD works when the normal boot wouldn't.

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Daniel Brumbaugh-Keeney (db-keen) said : 		#5

Thanks Ariel Cabral, that solved my question.

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Savvas Radevic (medigeek) said : 		#6

If the smart doesn't whine, then I can just assume that your hard drive is fine :) Let's hope it remains that way hehe