Problem in detecting my HDD

[Parakshit]

I am using the Linux operating system from last 6 months and have not got any problem with that. It was running fine. But yesterday it started showing me the error messages. The performance of the laptop get reduced to a great extends and it was moving like a snail. This message disappears and again it shows the same message. It is a very big message and therefore I am posting a part of it over here and I hope that you will understand the problem.

[66113.147901] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x3f SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[66113.147917] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008
[66113.147928] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[66113.147946] ata1.00: cmd 60/f8:10:82:ef:99/00:00:1c:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 126976 in
[66113.147949] res 41/40:f8:56:f0:99/00:00:1c:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>
[66113.147958] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[66113.147963] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
[66113.151434] ata1.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
[66113.152369] ata1.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
[66113.152379] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[66113.152436] ata1: EH complete
[66115.265545] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0xc SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[66115.265560] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008
[66115.265573] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[66115.265591] ata1.00: cmd 60/f8:18:82:ef:99/00:00:1c:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 126976 in
[66115.265594] res 41/40:f8:56:f0:99/00:00:1c:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>
[66115.265603] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[66115.265609] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
[66115.269049] ata1.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
[66115.269997] ata1.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
[66115.270007] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[66115.270070] ata1: EH complete

I think that my Hard Drive is dying. Can you guess that what may be the problem with it and how can I resolve it? If you have any suggestion on this then please post it over here. Thank you.

[Aleksandra]

You will find that there is a manufacturer’s disk integrity tool that you can use to check the disk. I am sure that the Ultimate boot CD has the utility to check the disk for the errors and bugs. Just run that utility and this will scan your entire hard drive for bugs and errors. If it found any problem with that then that will fix the error accordingly. This will take some time to complete and after that it will show you the detailed report of fixed bugs and errors. Once you are completed with the disk check then you have to restart you computer and then only the changes made by it will take effect. It will definitely fix the problem it that is related to any error on hard drive. Good Luck!!!

[kraal]

You can try to use the fsck. This command will help you check and to repair the filesystem for the Linux. This can be also used to repair one or more than one file system optionally. File system can be anything like the device name, a mount point or a UUID specifier.. This program manage to manage the filesystems on dissimilar physical disk drives. This decreases the entire amount of time wanted to verify all of the filesystems. If there is no filesystems mentioned or -A option is not specified then this will start checking the filesystems in /etc/fstab serially which is the default value for it. This is similar to –As option.

[Ernesto4]

This looks like that the disk is on the way out. Disk normally re-vectors the bad blocks to a reserved area of the drive for handling the bad block problems. Usually there are two alternate cylinders that are kept to a side for the work. Your drive is saying that it not able to reallocate. According to me, you are getting a read error which is from the bad section of your disk and that is affecting the performance of the system. I think that if you use the fsck then this will solve the problem for you to a great extends. I was also facing the similar problem earlier and I did the same and this solves the issue for me. You should also give it a try and see what it can do for you.

[SalVatore]

You are absolutely right that the HDD in your case is dying. A few weeks back, I was also facing the similar issue. I send it to WD for RMA they acknowledged it as a dead drive. If I be at your place then the first think that would do is to backup ASAP and not to play with the drive. Do not play with the drive means that you should not make to work more because you have to take the back up from it. If you over load that then it is possible that it may crap on you when you are copying the data.