Harddisk failure causes system crash, please help

[Bob Bishop]

Hi,

On 8 Nov 2007, at 20:40, David Naylor wrote:

> [possible disk problem]
>
> I have no idea what is wrong (if the disk has corrupted should the  
> kernel
> not display error messages?).  Can you please help/advise?

A flaky disk drive (rather than a corrupt filesystem on a good disk)  
will not necessarily talk enough sense for drivers to behave as we'd  
all like.

If you suspect the disk hardware, your first recourse should be to  
the manufacturer's diagnostic tool - they all have one, usually a  
bootable floppy (or CD these days), look on the disk manufacturer's  
website.

SMART is fine if the disk is working and may even help with an  
incipient failure that hasn't done any serious damage yet. Otherwise  
the manufacturer's diagnostic is your best bet.

--
Bob Bishop          +44 (0)118 940 1243
rb at gid.co.uk fax +44 (0)118 940 1295