[xubuntu-users] Unexpected hard drive trashing

[Yorvyk]

On 21/10/12 14:26, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> Yorvyk <yorvik.ubunto at googlemail.com
> <mailto:yorvik.ubunto at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
>
> No swap partition.
>
> Faulty drive or bad blocks?
>
> Have a look at /var/log/kern.log or run 'tail -f /var/log/kern.log'
> in a terminal to see what messages are coming up while this happens.
>
>
>
> Hi Yorvyk,
>
> You quoted my entire message so I don't know which of the problems
> you are referring to. I assume you are referring to the trashing
> during boot time.
>
All of them.  The symptoms are nearly the same as those suffered by a
friend.  The number of badblocks on one drive was steadily increasing
and not be reallocated because they were only being read in most cases.
  The cause turned out to be the data cable.

> I didn't find anything in kern.log.  I do have however something in
> boot.log, see below :
>
> *********************** dosfsck 3.0.13, 30 Jun 2012, FAT32, LFN There
> are differences between boot sector and its backup. Differences:
> (offset:original/backup) 65:01/00, 90:33/0e, 91:c9/1f, 92:8e/be,
> 93:d1/74, 94:bc/7e, 95:f4/ac , 96:7b/22, 97:8e/c0, 98:c1/74,
> 99:8e/06, 100:d9/b4, 101:bd/0e, 102:00/cd , 103:7c/10, 104:88/eb,
> 105:4e/f5, 106:02/b4, 107:8a/00, 108:56/cd
>
> < TRIMMED FOR LEGIBILITY >
>
> , 109:40/16, 111:08/00, 113:13/19, 114:73/eb, 115:05/fe, 116:b9/54 ,
>  488:61/00, 489:72/00, 490:72/00, 491:65/00, 492:72/00, 493:0d/00 ,
> 494:0a/00, 505:ac/00, 506:bb/00, 507:c9/00 Not automatically fixing
> this. /dev/sda7: clean, 151494/610800 files, 798558/2441872 blocks
> /dev/sdb1: clean, 97122/30531584 files, 21668877/122096000 blocks
> (check in 2 mounts) /dev/sda5: clean, 2889/305824 files,
> 60577/1220932 blocks /dev/sda6: clean, 11/305824 files, 54364/1220932
> blocks /dev/sda8: clean, 122670/28385280 files, 29715301/113525322
> blocks /dev/sda1: 42565 files, 1085676/1219742 clusters
> **************************************
>
>
> This thing has been annoying me for... like 5 to 10 years ! But I
> don't think it is too serious. It happens on the first partition of
> my first HDD: the FAT32 partition which hold Windows XP (the
> following partitions cater for a couple Linux installations: one for
>  testing purposes, the last one for regular use). I tried formatting
>  that partition and re-installing Windows, no luck, still got these
> errors. Then tried suppressing all partitions on that drive to start
>  from a clean sheet... still no luck ! So I though ok, maybe the
> drive is indeed faulty, so I got a brand new one... still got these
> errors !! :-O So it was weird, but at least I knew the original was
> probably not faulty in the end. So I though maybe the drive
> controller on the mother board is somehow faulty ? So I replaced the
> motherboard, along with brand new cables (switched from IDE to
> SATA)... and the errors were still there ! this was now starting to
> look more strange than really scary any more, so I eventually
> stopped worrying about it, especially since the drive never failed on
> me and never had  I/O errors no suffered any data loss or anything...
> I just get these errors at every boot, but it's clearly not related
> to faulty hardware, and it has no adverse effect. So I came to the
> conclusion that it's just some problem specific to FAT32 file
> checking, the utility maybe is a bit buggy.
>
The general consensus for this problem seems to be to run TestDisk.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download


> That said, I would lobe to boot in TEXT mode to see what happens as
> the hard drive trashes, but unfortunately there is this graphical
> boot splash with a progress bar, which hides what's going on. I would
> love to get rid of the graphics and just get the old text mode we
> used to have, with a fat penguin/TUX in a corner of the screen, old
> fashion style :-)
>
Removing the quiet and splash options from grub will show some of the
test but it flies past at great speed. Have a look at /var/log dmesg to 
see what is happening during boot.


Steve