To journal or not to journal

[IceQbe]

Willy K. Hamra wrote:
> Nigel Ridley wrote:
>> I have always used a journaling file system for my installs but have a collection of used hard 
>> drives that all seem to have a 'dead' spot in roughly the same place (trying to do a fresh 
>> install, using different versions and different distros, fails at the same point on all of them).
>> I know that when a hard drive begins to fail, the built-in hard drive software marks bad spots 
>> and doesn't use them, and that when the user notices a 'bad spot', then all available 'software' 
>> options have been used up.
>>
>> My question is, why is it that my collection of used Linux hard drives all have dead spots in 
>> roughly the same place? Is it because of the journaling file system writing to the same place all 
>> the time or is a coincidence?
>> If the former, what is a recommended file system to use - other than a journaling one?
>>
>> Blessings,
>>
>> Nigel
>>
> what i know though is that normal hard drives (don't know what they're
> called :P ) are not affected much by this journal, it is mainly solid
> state drives, i never had problems of bad sectors with any hard disk
> unless it's more than 7-8 years old, back on windows i used speedfan to
> monitor the s.m.a.r.t. values of the HD (it would be good if you know
> some similar utility in the repos), and the values were always good,
> whereas when i used ntfs on a usb flash drive, it died in almost 1
> month, started forgetting the filesystem everytime i plug it!
> 
> 

smartmontools?

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/smartmontools