Nikolay Vladimirov wrote:
The built-in IBM checks did work and the disk has bad sectors so it's a very very nice feature this disk monitor. It was very helpful and somewhat Fedora exclusive. In the past week or so there were gentoo, arch, ubuntu and XP(with the full built in IBM suite) installed on the machine. None of them had a big red "Your disk is damaged". I'm very happy that fedora could help me with that.
Before casting nasturtiums around, check that smartmontools were installed and running on the other systems.
It might just be a matter of timing, one second all is well and the next, the disk detects a problem. The disk may have been fine before this.
fwiw I have a disk that's been griping for a year or so, I really must do something about it. There are no errors in any files (I can read them okay), but I cannot read all the disk.
I have in mind cloning it, then writing zeros over the entire surface. That, in theory, causes the disk's firmware to assign alternate tracks/sectors or whatever happens in modern disks, and life goes on. It seems to have worked on the one disk I've done it on.
At work, we have a disk that goes <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> .... I don't think it will work on that one.