Corrupt Hard Disk?

From: Daniel Zeaiter (daniel@academytiles.com.au)
Date: Mon Apr 10 2000 - 01:11:53 EST


Recently strange things have been happening to my hard disk...

I'm checking my e-mail happily, and then all of a sudden I notice that
none of my e-mails will open, at all. Then Netscape tells me it can't
find my mail files. So I try to list the contents of my home folder, and
KFM has a heart attack and tells me it can't find my home folder, it
must have been deleted.

Naturally, I Ctrl-Alt-F1, to go into the main console and find that
about a million error messages are flying past, all referring to my hard
disk. I can't even type a command or login, these error messages just
fly past at a rate of about 10 a second.

The main message is this:

hdb: status error: status: 0x00 {}
hdb: drive not ready for command

This appears over and over and over and over again. And wedged in
between this constant, repeated message are various other error
messages. I couldn't pick them all up but here are some of them (x
refers to a number that changes from message to message):

ide0: reset: success
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:41 (hdb), sector x
EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,65)): ext2_write_inode unable to read inode
block -inode:x -block:x

Sorry if these error messages aren't exact, it's hard to write them down
when they're screaming past you faster than Bill Gates from the justice
department.

Anyway, I can't type in anything, can't issue a reboot command, so I
*GASP* reboot manually. The kernel boots up fine, until it gets to the
routine check of my hard disk, then says: "/dev/hdb1 contains a
filesystem with errors, check forced" and begins checking my disk.
Throughout the check I get error messages like this:

duplicate bad blocks in inode x
deleted inode x had zero dtime. FIXED.

Then I get asked for the root password, get thrown mercilessly into the
shell, and are asked to run fsck manually. I do so, idiotically press Y
to all of the questions that are asked (which are mainly, "bla bla bla:
fix?", I completely forgot to write these down), and then reboot
cleanly.

My system boots up smooth as a babies bottom, and everything goes on
like nothing ever happened, only for the same thing to happen a few days
later.

Weird huh? Maybe not. I doubt anyone will rush to answer this e-mail,
but it was worth a shot. The kernel mailing list was the one I thought
was the most relevant. Another thing I think is worthy of mentioning is
that as far as I can remember this only occurs when I'm connected to the
net. I'm in a network and running IP masq for two other machines. The
error might have occured when I'm not on the net, so don't hold this
against me, I have a bad memory.

Vital stats: Kernel 2.2.12-20, RH 6.1, Pentium III 450, 192 MB RAM,
Quantum Fireball EX HDD, 12 GB.

Thankyou guys and girls, and keep up the good work,
Daniel.

-- 

Daniel Zeaiter E-Mail: daniel@academytiles.com.au Website: http://www.academytiles.com.au Phone: 0408 242 500 ICQ: 16889511 "Carpe Dium, Seize the Day"

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