My hard drive has just given up the ghost(or close, doesn't matter either way)

[az]

What does S.M.A.R.T say is wrong with the drive?

To see all information provided by SMART on /dev/sda, run

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

To run a selftest on /dev/sda, run

sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda

To view the results of the test, display all information (see above) or simply run

sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda

[PmDematagoda]

Thanks az, I'll give the SMART self-assessment a try and see what it turns up.

[beniwtv]

Yep, I can agree with this.

Linux is *very* picky about the HDD it runs on.

Personally, I see this as a good thing (tm). I'd rather have the OS advise me of failures as early as possible, instead of the OS hiding these errors and loose data (happened to me with Windows - twice).

Also, a recent story: My father has an old external USB HDD. It still runs well, but it had some errors in the FAT structure. Linux would mount it as read-only, and complain. This is better than allowing writes like Windows did - you can mess up much if you do so. Then my father scanned it in Windows, and now everything is well again.

While read-only is not the safest either, at least it's safer than read-write.

Cheers,

[ellis rowell]

I can't see that this is a HDD failure, you say you can still read it and it's "read only". Something must have made it read only. If you could find out what caused it you may be able to reverse it.

[PmDematagoda]

The selftest was finished without errors according to the log here but I get read errors on both Linux and BSD, weird.

[az]

The selftest was finished without errors according to the log here but I get read errors on both Linux and BSD, weird.

Then, the problem is probably due to a bad connection or a faulty controller on your motherboard.

[PmDematagoda]

Then, the problem is probably due to a bad connection or a faulty controller on your motherboard.

Is it possible on a SATA(just asking)?

Edit:- Also the first hard drive works properly(from what I've seen), dunno if that would help though. And also one thing, I am rather sure that there are bad sectors on the second drive since I can remember that Windows turned them up about 2 years ago.