why is my hard drive getting smaller

Sounds like it has some bad sectors. Open System > Administration > Disk Utility and it should show you your hard drive. Check More Information and run a self-test. See what that says.

YES! there is 7 bad sectors .. i ask how to repair them and could not get a real anwser ..

Post the output of this:

fdisk -l

This will help us focus on the problem better

--
Regards,
Vikram Dhillon

On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 14:12 +0000, greg toler wrote:
> Question #92609 on yelp in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yelp/+question/92609
>
> Status: Answered => Open
>
> greg toler is still having a problem:
> YES! there is 7 bad sectors .. i ask how to repair them and could not
> get a real anwser ..
>

here is what i got Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x55000fa8

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13995 112414806 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 13996 14593 4803435 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 13996 14593 4803403+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
root@greg:/home/greg#

hope it help `s

When the operating system begins to detect bad sectors, in most cases, it means that the surface of the hard disk is failing and the drive has run out of spare sectors with which to remap the failed sector. Not to much you can do I'm afraid.

 i have spent the last two day reading about hdd with ubuntu installed . 7 bad sectors will not be 22.3 gb.being i only have ubuntu installed and i have tried to wipe the hdd tried to erase it and tried dban ;;which is boot and nuke also shred and wipe from root with live cd.. the only think left is to re-install and then it will say my hdd is even smaller.. so my question now is ; am i getting false readings ...???

going to install 9.04 beside 9.10 and test it that way to see what it says !!!!!

even in 9.04 system monitor and disk usage analyzer will give different readings . i`m reading 10 gb different in 9.10 and 8.9 in 9.04 .. so this all boils down to false readings ,, : or is there realy some thing wrong ???

Yeah it's weird. Ext 2,3,4 file-systems use reserved space. What does

sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1 | grep -i reserved

Show?

this is what i got dumpe2fs 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
Reserved block count: 1405185
Reserved GDT blocks: 1017
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
                                                                                                                                                                  when i put sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1 this is what i got sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1
dumpe2fs 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
Reserved block count: 1405185
Reserved GDT blocks: 1017
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
root@greg:/home/greg# sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1
dumpe2fs 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
Filesystem volume name: <none>
Last mounted on: /
Filesystem UUID: a460a0fe-5fd4-47e4-89eb-2d5fd7795e97
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize
Filesystem flags: signed_directory_hash
Default mount options: (none)
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
Filesystem OS type: Linux
Inode count: 7028736
Block count: 28103701
Reserved block count: 1405185
Free blocks: 26934394
Free inodes: 6875308
First block: 0
Block size: 4096
Fragment size: 4096
Reserved GDT blocks: 1017
Blocks per group: 32768
Fragments per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 8192
Inode blocks per group: 512
Flex block group size: 16
Filesystem created: Sat Dec 5 07:57:58 2009
Last mount time: Sat Dec 5 09:10:17 2009
Last write time: Sat Dec 5 08:22:42 2009
Mount count: 4
Maximum mount count: 33
Last checked: Sat Dec 5 07:57:58 2009
Check interval: 15552000 (6 months)
Next check after: Thu Jun 3 08:57:58 2010
Lifetime writes: 5885 MB
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
First inode: 11
Inode size: 256
Required extra isize: 28
Desired extra isize: 28
Journal inode: 8
First orphan inode: 81940
Default directory hash: half_md4
Directory Hash Seed: 601c389e-4b65-43d9-81c5-8ade347443c2
Journal backup: inode blocks
Journal size: 128M

still would like to here,,,, something !!!!!

Don't know Greg. I do have the same issue

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 182G 2.9G 170G 2% /
udev 249M 272K 249M 1% /dev
none 249M 1.5M 248M 1% /dev/shm
none 249M 84K 249M 1% /var/run
none 249M 0 249M 0% /var/lock
none 249M 0 249M 0% /lib/init/rw

I really think it has to do with ext4 file-system and journaling.

while waiting i have , used gpart live to wiped the hdd installed 9.04 it did the same thing ;; said the hdd was smaller than it really is . this started back at 8.10 , then i did not pay attention to it but now it is at 96.3gb . if i re install again it will get even smaller ... === what is journaling ??

i found a ubuntu forum that helped gained .1 gb by using the suggestions there [[[[[ http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=140920 ]]]] ....

A journaling file system is a file system that logs changes to a journal (usually a circular log in a dedicated area of the file system) before committing them to the main file system. Such file systems are less likely to become corrupted in the event of power failure or system crash.

Using gparted only deletes the partition. When you install do you use the entire drive? You may want to try using ext2 to see if that helps as it is not a journaling file system.

 when i re-install yes i use the whole drive.. how do i change to ext 2 ??

 i used gpart to change to ext2 missed up boot grub ;;; had to reinstall so i have no clue how to fix this or if it can be..

i have one to think about : different hdd manufactors rate there hdd size different ways , so what to say that the programs in ubuntu are not having the same problem . ?? the disk utility says 120 gb with 115 free space [which i believe ] the other 2 i think can not read the hdd i have rite .. i have not found any place that anybody is reporting the same kind of problem !!

today i decided to try avast anti virus , so i un-installed clamtk and installed avast .. after running it, it had too many errors;; so i un-installed it put clamtk back in.. while doing the preferences on it i seen they were all ready set. and that made me think where do un-installed files and programs go .. made me think that some where in ubuntu, ubuntu is keeping a record of add and removed programs and of installs /un-installs. because my free space is now at 96.6gb

Yes, the config files are in your /home directory. If you open Places > Home Folder and press Ctrl + H you will see directories (folders) with a dot ( . ) in front of them. Those are hidden configuration files.

If you had 120 gb with 115 gb of free plus whatever swap is you should be set.

I've heard that theory about the manufacturers, but I firugured it was like maybe 5 or 6 gb at most.

 i tried it and it did nothing ..it did not not show no more than the file system shows..

 un-installed ubuntu ,,,,, installed debian 5.0 it says i have 111 gb free space and 107 avalible ;;;; thank you ! for the help !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!