Re: [gentoo-user] Re: recommendation sought for external disk

On Thu, Jan 02 2014, walt wrote:

> On 01/01/2014 03:28 PM, gottlieb@×××.edu wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 01 2014, walt wrote:
>>
>>> On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottlieb@×××.edu wrote:
>>>> My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for
>>>> a number of years and the disk is starting to fail.
>>>
>>> Maybe I'm weird or something but I've never once had a hard drive fail
>>> gradually/gracefully.  They all just stop working, usually when I power
>>> the machine on for the first time in the morning.
>>>
>>> What warning is the disk giving you of early failure?
>>
>> First it wouldn't mount in during startup.
>>
>> Then I tried switching the USB ports on the desktop and rebooted.
>> It mounted but fsck took forever with pauses.
>
> The open-source culture in general seems to frown upon promotion of
> proprietary software (as opposed to proprietary hardware) so I usually
> avoid recommending proprietary software.
>
> But, based on reports I consider reliable (how's them for weasel words!)
> I'd suggest that Spin-Rite has a chance of restoring that drive to normal
> function.  ("Has a chance" == more weasel words).
>
> Anyway, consider buying Spin-Rite here:
>
> https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
>
> My own hard drives usually fail catastrophically within the the first month,
> so I just return them for replacement under warranty.  But if I ever have
> an older drive fail I will certainly use Spin-Rite before giving up hope.

Very interesting.  I plan to buy the new disk since the old one is old,
I can use the extra space (750GB --> 2TB), and the price is right.

But I may get spin-rite anyway; the author's explanation of how it works
was good.

thanks,
allan