Slow Hard drive.... unable to reach BIOS

Do you see anything on the Error Log tab?
No, nothing

Screenshot from 2018-07-21 15-08-55.png
 


It is running much better though.
Of course, I like the sound of that! :D:D But read failure errors are still a concern.... it's hard to put faith and trust in it, although you might use it for many months and not really experience any problems.

Wizard will be up soon having his morning "cuppa" and I'd like to have his thoughts on another step to take below. GSmartControl and badblocks do not "mark" bad blocks, from what I can find online. There is another command, e2fsck, that will run badblocks and then try to mark those blocks as bad. From what I can read, modern hard drives should be doing this automatically and using a built-in store of good spare blocks as replacements... but if it has already used all the good spares (which we do not know), then this step may "mark" the bad blocks you have and keep them from further use. If new bad blocks continue to develop, well, the game will be over at some point I'm afraid, and probably sooner rather than later. (Sometimes I am just too darn pessimistic! Sorry!)

Okay, the e2fsck command cannot be run on a mounted drive, so you will have to boot on your USB to do this, if Wizard concurs with this idea (and that I have the proper code below). After the process is finished (and it might take a long while)... then you can reboot back to the hard drive and we'll try the GSmartControl short and long tests again. The command to run (from the Live USB) is:
Code:
sudo su  # do this first to get root
e2fsck -c /dev/sda1

Of course, please write down any reports that the test may generate if they aren't too long. I've never done this so I don't really know what to expect. There is a slightly different version that is a read-write test, but I'm a bit too gun shy about that so as not to damage any data that you have on the drive now. The above command is just a read test and will mark the bad blocks that it finds that way.

I'll be in and out, off and on... going to work night shift tonight. The fun never stops! :eek:

Cheers
 
Might be tomorrow before I can do this....

That works fine with me, I have a few ideas and I'll put some structure to them and bring 'em back.

Stan is doing fine, too (not patronising, but praising), but I also have some input on e2fsck that many of The Viewers may not be aware of.

Cheers and back when I can.

Avagudweegend

Wiz
 
Don't wait on me, that e2fsck output may be of interest. Mine took only about 2 - 3 minutes to come back good with about 0.3% fragmentation, but that was on only a 16GB partition. Christina's will likely take longer.

I'll be around

Wizard
 
Uh oh... you're right. Abort if you can.

Try to reboot on the hard drive. It may not.
 
Whew! I'm so glad! Total mistake on my part, and I'm sorry. You were right: should not have been sda1.

But you did run the command when booted from the USB drive, right? That is also very important. So, with a deep breath, if you want to try it again, it should be sda2, your Linux filesystem.
Code:
sudo su
e2fsck -c /dev/sda2]

I'm leaving shortly to go in to work early tonight for a 15-hr midnight shift. So, I'll be in and out, off and on, as before. But if you have any questions, leaving them hanging on here and I'll reply as soon as I can (or one of the other guys will).

Cheers
 
Good catch... no bracket. :D

Typing too fast... it was part of the code tag.
 
I'm on deck now, Christina, for any questions (although I will be in and out a little).

As a comparison, I've included mine in the Spoiler below (just click to show, then click to hide if you wish). I performed mine from another of my Distros, a Linux Mint, in the same way you had to use a stick. My Ubuntu 16.04 is on /dev/sda12.

chris@SylviaMATE ~ $ sudo su
[sudo] password for chris:
SylviaMATE chris # e2fsck -c /dev/sda12
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 0.00% done, 0:00 elapsed. (0/0/0 errdone
XenialUnityStudy: Updating bad block inode.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

XenialUnityStudy: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
XenialUnityStudy: 275429/983040 files (0.3% non-contiguous), 2083526/3932160 blocks
SylviaMATE chris #

Mine only took about 2.5 minutes, but I am only using 16GB for the install.

I'll have to scout around, but there will be a log somewhere where the errors are displayed in more detail, perhaps, and we can take a look at those 149 (which is better than 250s to 280s :)).

Just go about your normal business for now, and let us know if anything untoward happens.

Cheers

Chris
 
That looks better than sda1. Lol. :D

Now reboot back on hard drive and run the GSmartControl with the short test. If no errors, run it with the long test. Just trying to determine if e2fsck did what I hoped and marked the bad blocks.
 
That looks better than sda1. Lol. :D

Now reboot back on hard drive and run the GSmartControl with the short test. If no errors, run it with the long test. Just trying to determine if e2fsck did what I hoped and marked the bad blocks.

Did it twice and will only go 10%.....

Screenshot from 2018-07-23 18-04-43.png
 
Oh well. It showed the same LBA too, so that's not very encouraging. Maybe that Wizard fellow will have some better suggestions... he usually does. :D

I'm running out of ideas. :eek::confused:
 
Oh well. It showed the same LBA too, so that's not very encouraging. Maybe that Wizard fellow will have some better suggestions... he usually does. :D

I'm running out of ideas. :eek::confused:

Oh well..... I sure do appreciate all the help from all of you! At least it is running better, noticeably better ;). I wouldn't have known what to do and am not very good at searches, all the info out there gets confusing when you don't know what you are doing lolo_O:D
 
We hate to admit defeat! Lol :D

I'm glad it seems to be working better though. And maybe Wizard will pull a rabbit out of his hat, or something. :D

But I'm afraid problems will continue to pop up as you go along. You may lose data, so you do want to do careful backups of things you want to keep.

Maybe a new hard drive could be a birthday or Christmas request. :D
 
We hate to admit defeat! Lol :D

I'm glad it seems to be working better though. And maybe Wizard will pull a rabbit out of his hat, or something. :D

But I'm afraid problems will continue to pop up as you go along. You may lose data, so you do want to do careful backups of things you want to keep.

Maybe a new hard drive could be a birthday or Christmas request. :D

LMAO Well, both are coming up but doubt anyone can afford it hahaha. I don't even have any idea what to look for either.......
 
There are bargains sometimes, but I always like to check reviews on things like hard drives... some get a bad reputation for failing too soon (like within days).

The important things are the size... not in GB, but the physical size to be sure you get a laptop hard drive and not for a desktop. The other thing is the connector type... most are SATA, but you want to look at you existing drive and be sure.

You know, even if you hard drive fails suddenly, you can always run on you USB too. It's a bit slower, but it works. If you wanted to do that long term, we might suggest that you make the USB a little differently and use "persistence" so it would save some things for you between reboots. But we'll get there if/when needed.
 

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