And The Hard Drive Saga Continues...

[crokett]

I got home last night and checked the deesktop downstairs. Ghost hadn't created any new scheduled images while we were gone last week. I tried creating a new one but Ghost reported some needed files were missing. I reinstalled it, tried again and it starts but then fails partway through with a CRC error. Did this 3 times. I will get the Western Digital diagnostics and run them tonight, but I might be returning the d@mn thing this week.

[cgallery]

CRC errors can be fixed with HDAT. It will read every sector of the drive, looking for CRC errors. When it finds one, it will read that sector "long" (bypassing the drive's built-in error checking) and then rewrite the sector (allowing the drive to recompute the CRC).

If performing this process increases the reallocated sector count (read the drive's SMART atts to determine this), then you know your drive probably has bad media or another underlying problem. If not, then the drive is good, and the CRC error is more likely the result of an interrupted write (power got switched off, or a bus reset occurred).

If there are lots of CRC errors (more than one or two), then I'd be concerned about underlying problems and swap the drive.

You can get HDAT on the Ultimate Boot CD.

[crokett]

Thanks for the tip. right now, not sure I want to go through the trouble, may just wipe it and exchange it for another. All the data is already backed up.

[Sam Conder]

Starting to sound like a controller issue.

[crokett]

Sam I sure hope not. I have the same model controller running in my Linux server. It has been for several months with no issues. I got the drive diagnostics and will try those, but I am not hopeful. I've never ever seen diagnostics fail anything, even on known bad hardware.

[crokett]

The drive is going back. It failed the manufacturer diagnostics twice and failed the util cgallery suggested when I attached it to the controller in the Linux machine.

[pelligrini]

Yep, just because it is new doesn't mean it was good. It is better to find out now than 6 months and many more gig down the line.

[crokett]

The new drive is in and seems to be ok. So far it is doing what the old one wouldn't. Still, the fallout continues.... my Quicken data is corrupt back to April. A directory of useful software that I've been collecting for years likewise is toast. All that data is on the server but is corrupt. On the bright side, most of our pictures are ok. It remains to be seen whether the movie footage I have survived. Like the quicken data, it was being backed up but garbage in=garbage out.

[jussi]

Google did a study about hard drives. They found that most of the drives that failed, did so at the start of their lives or would give you a few years of service. So if you have drive that doesn't die right away it should be good for a few years.

[pelligrini]

I've got a large USB drive that ghost images get written to, and overwritten. I still like to do an occaisional backup to another media type every once in a while, usually tape or DVD. It takes a while, but I do it exactly for the reasons above.