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View Full Version : [all variants] hard drive diagnostic tools for linux


chadeusmaximus
August 2nd, 2008, 04:44 PM
I am looking for hard drive diagnostic tools for linux. Any suggestions?

For those interested, I installed ubuntu ubuntu8.04 on an HP DV1000. EVERYTHING WORKS after the install. This is probably because it uses intel graphics (8500 chipset I think). Not sure what the wireless card was, but if anybody is curious I can look it up.

This laptop was a salvage. It had been in a flood, and I didn't expect it to work in the first place. It's been sitting in a closet for almost 6 months, so it had plenty of time to dry out.

So I decided to play with it the other day to see if it was salvagable, and surprise, surprise it was. It had XP home on it, and while it worked, it was very slow, and stuttered when you clicked on the start menu or tried to browse around the hard drive. Also, the only program listed in the start menu was notepad. nothing else.

I decided to format the drive and install ubuntu on it. 30 minutes later, after a complete format and install, it works great. Everything: wireless, DVDRW, ethernet, LCD, external monitor.

However, there is a slight lag It might be because its 1.7 Pentium M, with 512mb and shared intel graphics. Or it might be that the hard drive is a bad drive. While it works now, it might be dying.

So how do I test the health of a hard drive with Linux? I'm running ubuntu 8.04.

(Sorry about the long post, but we've all learned that a laptop can come back from the dead if it was in a flood)

CHAD

phidia
August 2nd, 2008, 05:40 PM
You probably want SMART a means of checking a hard drive and warning you before the disk fails. The Ubuntu wiki has a guide on SMART here (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools).

jetpeach
August 6th, 2008, 05:09 PM
oops, posted on the wrong thread. i give some tips on hard drive checking in this other thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=881617
see the fourth post