On Mon, 2012-04-30 at 12:04 -0700, John Reiser wrote:
How old is the drive? That model number says 3-platter, 320MB,
SATA.
If it's three or more years old, then just replace it. A new drive
is $90 or less in US, and 500GB is available for the same price
and same other specs (size, power, heat, performance, ...).
The data is worth far more than that.
Dunno about that attitude being universal. On my workstations I use NFS
homes so there is no data, only code. I depend on SMART being right
enough so I can usually yank a failing drive before it goes so bad the
worker can't login and use the machine. But I could care less about any
data on it, it is only a clone; because NFS root is just too much of a
performance hit compared to the cheapness of drives these days. I try
to keep one spare workstation ready to drop in place of a failed unit so
downtime is minimal no matter what manages to go wrong with one.
Because a failure isn't a big deal and SMART is usually pretty good
about giving an advance warning I run em until they die. In fact if the
failure is just a few bad blocks I often zero the drive (or run the
manufacturer's low level tool) and if the SMART warning goes away I put
it back in service and usually get a few more years out of em. My
average drive age is easily over five years on workstations. Still have
quite a few 40GB IDE drives in service. A 500GB drive might be dirt
cheap now but a fairly complete Linux install still fits on a 40GB drive
so why throw out perfectly servicable equip?
If your data is worth anything it shouldn't be subject to loss of a
drive regardless of age.
I. THOU SHALT MAKE BACKUPS
II. THOU SHALT KEEP THY BACKUPS CURRENT
III. THOU SHALT VERIFY THY BACKUPS