On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 9:41 PM, unsolicited <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:unsolicited@swiz.ca">unsolicited@swiz.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 10/23/2010 9:14 PM:<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
So, here is an update.<br>
<br>
I ran the e2fsck -c -y on the the disk (1TB), still in its USB enclosure.<br>
<br>
One thing I noticed is that it complained about the bad blocks inode being<br>
shared by another file. Should I be concerned about this? Or has it been<br>
fixed by fsck?<br>
<br>
Also, it took a long time. I know I can take the disk out of the enclosure<br>
(with some tinkering, this USB enclosure is not designed to be opened), but<br>
I have reasons not to for the time being.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
Warranty, or it's a client's, presumably.<br></blockquote><div><br>No, neither.<br><br>Basically, there is no spare PC in a convenient location with power and network <br>connection to eviscerate and connect the drive to.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
None of your messages to date indicate you mistrust the data that's there, so I'll leave that branch of this thread. Mind you, Charles' advice about taking an image (now?), resonates. Presumably a raw image. Thus, if it's a client's, you may be protecting your backside by taking one. (Hopefully you don't have to buy another USB drive just to back up this one. See 'irony.')<br>
</blockquote><div><br>The disks are used for backup, and they are not the only disks that have that. I do backups daily to 2 separate disks. These ones are the higher capacity (the other is only 500GB), and they are the fixed disks (the others are removable and go off site on a rotation).<br>
<br>So all the data on these disks are replicated elsewhere and hence replaceable, with some moderate effort. <br><br>The decision here is to detect whether these disks are no good for future backups, can they be trusted, what caused them to go bad (is it really physical platter problem, or just USB connection, or what exactly).<br>
<br>One of them has been on constantly for maybe 1.5 years. The other was on for part of that.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Hopefully this is the only USB device you have hooked up at the moment, at least on that channel. </blockquote><div><br>When running fsck, this was the only active device on USB on that machine. There is another on some other USB port, but it was not doing anything.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Any change if you use a different usb port? </blockquote><div><br>Not going to try it again for 14 hours.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">The AC adapter is plugged in to it? </blockquote><div><br>Yes, it is powered by a separate adapter.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Have you noticed any difference between a 'powered' usb port and a non-powered one?<br>
</blockquote><div><br>Don't use any non-powered ones at the moment.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
If warranty is the issue ... well ... how 'bad' does a drive have to be (per your manufacturer) before it is replaceable? Perhaps worth finding out?<br></blockquote><div><br>Not sure if they are under warranty or not. Need to lookup the receipts to know.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
This thread does make me wonder ... are you dealing with file system corruption, or a disk going bad (let alone the usb interface "isn't ATA"). If it's disk corruption, presumably file system corruption is not far behind, jeopardizing the files that are currently there and healthy, now. (You have a backup?) Could that be what you are now seeing? (Thus the inode issue, now?)<br>
</blockquote><div><br>The errors came up the same with the same block numbers as before. So maybe it is physical damage, but I can't rule out FS corruption either.<br><br>Someone who knows this stuff better can chime in.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Since it's a USB drive and you're reluctant to extract it, I'm guessing the manufacturer intended it to only ever be a USB drive. In that case ... might they have a diagnostic program that does run over USB?</blockquote>
</div><br clear="all">Even if I can find a Windows booted PC, will the diagnostics still work on an ext3 filesystem?<br>-- <br>Khalid M. Baheyeldin<br><a href="http://2bits.com">2bits.com</a>, Inc.<br><a href="http://2bits.com">http://2bits.com</a><br>
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