Slow Hard drive.... unable to reach BIOS



I feel like I am being a pest lol so gonna just see how everything runs for the day. Will do the sudo apt upgrade and see what that does.....
 
Is there a specific way I am supposed to do this? Or just sudo apt upgrade....
Sorry, I wasn't home when I last replied, so a delay while driving about. Yes, sudo apt update first, then sudo apt upgrade is usually enough to make everything happy.
 
I feel like I am being a pest lol so gonna just see how everything runs for the day. Will do the sudo apt upgrade and see what that does.....
I didn't want to "like" this post.... because you're not being a pest at all. You've had a tough problem here, and I'm not sure we're finished with it yet. Using it and trying things out is the way to see if it will be stable though. But at first I would also not put a lot of faith in it.

But now at 9 pages into this thread, we might suggest that other things (like flash problems) go into a new thread. But we can still stay here with the "slow hard drive" issues if they continue. I think the BIOS problem is solved now, right?
 
By all means, go ahead if you want. We only had you do the preliminary check, and it passed that. There is a "short test" that can complete in about 2 minutes and a "long test" that I'm a little too nervous to encourage. It might take days! :eek::eek::D:D

I looked a little bit at the KillDisk program too, but I'm not sure if it will help in your case. It is mostly designed to erase a drive... even erase it repeatedly (for security reasons... to be sure nothing can be recovered). @Ptahhotep might explain it better since he is familiar with it, but it does not seem to be a diagnostic tool. And there is still the issue that you would need to install it to your USB flash drive in order to use it at all.

We had talked about running badblocks again after Ubuntu was up and running, but I'd wait on Wizard's opinion about that since it did not give a good report previously when testing the empty drive. Chris had also mentioned using Gparted to set aside a new partition in order to store Timeshift images of your system. This is a great tool so that when things go bad, you can recall one of the images and set things straight again. But my concern in your case is, if your drive is failing, your Timeshift images may be written to bad blocks (or the blocks could go bad as they are being written to).... and a corrupted image may not be the lifesaver that you expect it to be. I have not used Timeshift, so Chris knows much more about whether this might be a justified fear or not. But, hard drives do fail... boom, done! A sudden and total failure would mean your Timeshift images would be gone too, which is why I would choose an external hard drive, or even a pair of external hard drives for redundancy. But you've indicated those would not be an option for you right now.

If your hard drive suddenly and totally fails... it wasn't "boom and done" though. You've had warning signs, and we've been doing diagnostics to try to determine it's state of health. So far the signs have not been good... the number of bad blocks seems excessive, and have increased between tests. (Thanks for writing down the numbers!)

It's hard to say how well, or for how long, it will work for you. For as long as it is working, keep on enjoying Linux and have fun... but anything you download or create that is very important to you should be stored somewhere else regularly (to USB flash drive, or to a cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive). The day may come by necessity that you put your Windows 7 hard drive back in and that you use that instead, just to have something that works properly. Hmmm, and that thought just made me wonder about the BIOS setting for UEFI mode. I guess that the Windows 7 drive worked okay for you before, even with the UEFI setting enabled.... because I think you told us it was enabled, and I don't think we had you make any BIOS changes, did we? If you ever install that hard drive and it has any problem booting, the BIOS/UEFI settings should probably be the first thing to consider. It's probably all fine as is though... my head is just spinning at this point, and I'll bet yours is too. :confused::confused::eek::eek::D:D

Cheers
 
I guess that the Windows 7 drive worked okay for you before, even with the UEFI setting enabled.... because I think you told us it was enabled, and I don't think we had you make any BIOS changes, did we?

Actually UEFI was disabled and we enabled it to boot on the usb. Think tomorrow I will do the tests above and see what it says this time. I will wait for further info from all of you to know how to proceed. I also wondered, when installing do you have to have internet access? If so, that may have been part of the problem because I have satellite internet and don't always get signal......
 
because I have satellite internet and don't always get signal.....

Now THAT's interesting :cool:

(Wizard appears waving an empty coffee cup, no joy, Elaine down hallway playing Solitaire)

Just finishing my 1st cuppa on a Saturday morning here. Morning all.

When I grab my 2nd cuppa, I'll swing over to 16.04 and check out software centre.

Do you have an Ethernet cable to plug through your router to the wall, Christina?

Any break in connectivity during downloads could adversely affect the downloaded packages.

As Arnie said "I'll be back!"

Wiz
 
By all means, go ahead if you want. We only had you do the preliminary check, and it passed that. There is a "short test" that can complete in about 2 minutes and a "long test" that I'm a little too nervous to encourage. It might take days! :eek::eek::D:D

I looked a little bit at the KillDisk program too, but I'm not sure if it will help in your case. It is mostly designed to erase a drive... even erase it repeatedly (for security reasons... to be sure nothing can be recovered). @Ptahhotep might explain it better since he is familiar with it, but it does not seem to be a diagnostic tool. And there is still the issue that you would need to install it to your USB flash drive in order to use it at all.

We had talked about running badblocks again after Ubuntu was up and running, but I'd wait on Wizard's opinion about that since it did not give a good report previously when testing the empty drive. Chris had also mentioned using Gparted to set aside a new partition in order to store Timeshift images of your system. This is a great tool so that when things go bad, you can recall one of the images and set things straight again. But my concern in your case is, if your drive is failing, your Timeshift images may be written to bad blocks (or the blocks could go bad as they are being written to).... and a corrupted image may not be the lifesaver that you expect it to be. I have not used Timeshift, so Chris knows much more about whether this might be a justified fear or not. But, hard drives do fail... boom, done! A sudden and total failure would mean your Timeshift images would be gone too, which is why I would choose an external hard drive, or even a pair of external hard drives for redundancy. But you've indicated those would not be an option for you right now.

If your hard drive suddenly and totally fails... it wasn't "boom and done" though. You've had warning signs, and we've been doing diagnostics to try to determine it's state of health. So far the signs have not been good... the number of bad blocks seems excessive, and have increased between tests. (Thanks for writing down the numbers!)

It's hard to say how well, or for how long, it will work for you. For as long as it is working, keep on enjoying Linux and have fun... but anything you download or create that is very important to you should be stored somewhere else regularly (to USB flash drive, or to a cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive). The day may come by necessity that you put your Windows 7 hard drive back in and that you use that instead, just to have something that works properly. Hmmm, and that thought just made me wonder about the BIOS setting for UEFI mode. I guess that the Windows 7 drive worked okay for you before, even with the UEFI setting enabled.... because I think you told us it was enabled, and I don't think we had you make any BIOS changes, did we? If you ever install that hard drive and it has any problem booting, the BIOS/UEFI settings should probably be the first thing to consider. It's probably all fine as is though... my head is just spinning at this point, and I'll bet yours is too. :confused::confused::eek::eek::D:D

Cheers
Killdisk has the inspection tool, but a word of warning it has to be done with care. One of the reasons why I suggested it was that it would kill the disk and remove everything including any bad blocks. The information on what it does are quite clear on the website and how to use it. I have used it when I know the hdd is okay, but can't work a way around the problems on it. Therefore I have used it to sanitise the hdd and start again. There does come a point IMHO that is is the easiest solution otherwise you're flogging a dead horse
 
Now THAT's interesting :cool:

(Wizard appears waving an empty coffee cup, no joy, Elaine down hallway playing Solitaire)

Just finishing my 1st cuppa on a Saturday morning here. Morning all.

When I grab my 2nd cuppa, I'll swing over to 16.04 and check out software centre.

Do you have an Ethernet cable to plug through your router to the wall, Christina?

Any break in connectivity during downloads could adversely affect the downloaded packages.

As Arnie said "I'll be back!"

Wiz
The E cable is the best solution here if she has one and it might increase the speeds as well. Good morning BTW Wiz - just off to the land of nod here as it is 23:38 :(:( Off topic, in your wanderings have you come across any other distros with grub2 issues?
 
Do you have an Ethernet cable to plug through your router to the wall, Christina?

No, sure don't, wouldn't reach this far lol. Comes into my nephew's bedroom and don't like to do it back there either lol but could if I had to.......
 
in your wanderings have you come across any other distros with grub2 issues?

Just briefly, but we can start something elsewhere if need be - Parrot 4.1 put on a week or so ago, but not quite the same as with Tara. Wasn't the internet connection, but rather the options on the Live Grub Menu - Top one installer would fall over at the bootloader install part, but bottom choice of about 8 -9 !! was GTK Installer and that worked like a charm

Cheers

Wiz
 
Actually UEFI was disabled and we enabled it to boot on the usb. Think tomorrow I will do the tests above and see what it says this time. I will wait for further info from all of you to know how to proceed. I also wondered, when installing do you have to have internet access? If so, that may have been part of the problem because I have satellite internet and don't always get signal......
Ah yes, I forgot. So if you do decide to put the Windows 7 hard drive back in, you will probably need to set UEFI back to disabled (and be sure that Secure Boot is disabled too.... though Secure Boot should work with Ubuntu). UEFI is the preferred new method of setting up a hard drive for a number of reasons. No need to explain all of the reasons... but your computer is capable, Ubuntu is capable, and you should use it unless you have a serious reason not to. Hmmm, setting up the Windows hard drive to "dual boot" with Windows and Linux might be a seriously good reason, but I'd be reluctant at the moment to put any risk on that drive because of its importance to you. "If it ain't broke... don't fix it!" is a phrase that comes to mind right now. :eek::D

You don't need Internet access to install Ubuntu from your flash drive. During the install, just do not let it connect and it will proceed. The advantage is that it can download updates as you go, but you can just as well download them after the install has completed. I realize that satellite internet packages are often expensive and may have limits on how much you can download each month, so that may be a factor in your usage habits. I just left a rural area about 4 years ago, and I was able to get a DSL line... but I'm not sure it was any better than satellite service.

Cheers
 
HI Christina! OK, give it a go. Click Device at the top (with your hard drive highlighted like you show).... then click View Details. That opens up another screen with many tabs. Pick the far right tab for Perform Tests. It should already be selected for Short Test, and probably says it will take about 2 minutes. Click the Execute button to begin, and then just wait for it. The results will show in the next tab to the left, the Selt-test Logs. It may or may not detect any errors... but let us know. After that, you can consider the Long Test if you want.... mine says about 3 hours to complete, but your may say differently, and it may take longer than it says. Once you begin, you might as well let it run, however long it takes.
 
Did it twice. Long test says about 70 min.....
One pass, one fail for read error... even on short test. The long test will probably show failure too, but go ahead if you have the time and want to check that. Kind of watch the time and see if 70 minutes is accurate.... I'm just curious.
 
Don't think it will complete a long test. Tried twice and only couple minutes each.... It is running much better though.

Screenshot from 2018-07-21 14-30-09.png
 

Members online


Top