On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 11:02:41 +1100
L <yuanlux(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi
The hard disk on a laptop shows failing error "Disk had many bad
sectors' it suggests 'backup data and replace disk. Of course, this
test information was generated by Palimpsest Disk Utility on F12.
However, when I used self-test utility from BIOS (HP 6710), it passed
all tests.
Which result is reliable, one from Palimpsest Dish Utility or BIOS
self-test utiltity?
Generally speaking the BIOS code asks the drive for its opinion and
displays that. It's usually as good a guide as you get for overall state.
If the drive vendors firmware with low level detailed access to the
innards can't tell then probably neither can anything else.
Remembering
- Many disk failures don't show up via SMART at all
- You only see the BIOS one at boot
- You should have a backup anyway because you might need it for other
reasons (eg accidents as root)
Bad sectors are not neccessarily a problem (the drive will have replaced
them with spare ones when written). Unreadable sectors indicates a problem
somewhere - you have a sector 'live' on disk which cannot be re-read.
It's the trend that is likely to be more important. If it had 12 bad
sectors a year ago and it has 12 today why worry. If it had 1 last
week, 5 yesterday and 12 today then its a bit different.
Alan