[ubuntu-uk] Bug #1 and onwards....

[alan c]

On 13/11/11 01:04, Alan Pope wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12 Nov 2011, at 23:29, alan c <aeclist at candt.waitrose.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/11/11 18:41, Barry Drake wrote:
>>> On 12/11/11 17:03, alan c wrote:
>>>> Yes, sorry, I was too vague, SMART errors. I explained to her at the 
>>>> time that we were not looking at her Windows, and this was information 
>>>> from the drive itself. And then later her son connected remotely, to 
>>>> Windows presumably, looked at the file system, saw nothing untoward, 
>>>> and rubbished Ubuntu.
>>> I came across this last year.  I bought a secondhand drive from Amazon.  
>>> Ubuntu immediately condemned it - it had close to the maximum of 
>>> relocated sectors.  Windows, however, didn't tell me anything!  
>>> Obviously I got in touch with Amazon who gave me a full refund and told 
>>> me to dump the drive.  The seller seems to have disappeared from 
>>> Amazon's list!  They would have got away with it if I were a Windows 
>>> user, as a few folk still seem to be.
>>> 
>>> I'm told by a friend who was a developer on NTFS that it is an excellent 
>>> filesystem, misused by the overarching operating system.  It only 
>>> fragments because its potential was never properly implemented.  I tend 
>>> to believe this.
>>> 
>>> Maybe your friend ought to have been allowed to ignore the SMART test.  
>>> The Ubuntu knocker would have had egg on his face in a month or two when 
>>> the drive dies catastrophically!
>> 
>> (grim smile)
>> 
>> I have replied with a number of informative and polite and appropriate
>> messages.
>> 
>> The code of conduct would be proud of me! (note to self: I must try to
>> understand exactly how to  sign it).
>> 
>> The person is still saying she wants to run Ubuntu (alongside), and I
>> have  suggested
>> 1) she uses www.hdtune.com to do a double check for herself (or
>> relative) and
>> 2) that her relative please resize Windows first, then I will  be able
>> to help her with installing Ubuntu. I await  this situation.
>> 
>> My hopeful objective is to keep her and her associate on board, and
>> quite possibly, in time, interest her relative too, when he becomes
>> better informed. I live in hope as you see.

> What evidence did you provide to backup you disk failure claim?
> Log of smart tools output or screenshots from disk utility may be useful here otherwise it's your word against his.

I had spent some time running her laptop in live session together with
her. She saw as I did, the SMART warnings entries from the Ubuntu live
session disc utility, and I talked about it, because neither of us had
expected it, although I often look when checking out an unknown
machine. So there is no doubt that we saw SMART reported probs at the
time. I gave my time freely so there is no adverse motive.

Today at the PC fair she attended, chatted, and I helped her purchase
an external USB drive to take backups more seriously, good thing.
Particularly if the HD is in fact failing. When we saw the SMART
fails, there was no time then to even try more live sessions, nor try
a seagate  tool I sometimes use, although at one stage when trying to
copy paste some photos to a usb stick earlier, I got some error
messages which looked a lot like serious stuff. Since time ran out
then and she is now focussed on concept of backup of data, and also I
know I have subsequently given polite information re various options
(which she has passed to her relative) then I am happy that  -
whatever outcome - the proper actions and responses (from me) have
occured and I can rest easy. Once her relative looks further than just
ntfs I would be surprised if he does not find SMART info himself. If
for a strange reason the SMART problems are looked for and never again
seen (??) then I will continue helping her to start running Ubuntu
dual boot (vista) as she wants.

In hindsight the biggest problem I had (emotionally that is) was
recognising that even when there was a clear motivation for Ubuntu,
there were very strong immediate influences indeed against (ubuntu) on
grounds of an 'NTFS Drivers' myth. I can guess that he had simply not
looked at SMART data, only the file system. I sense a whiff of
prejudice. But then I think the relative seems to work a lot with Windows.
-- 
alan cocks
Ubuntu user