Short answer to Mark: yes. Much longer answer, in direct reaction to ET aka kitepilot: No, the first check should be to make the output be either another hard drive or a file on another hard drive, not /dev/null. This might be your only chance to read the whole thing. Actually, as I typed that I realized that the VERY FIRST THING Mark should do is use ddrescue. (Sorry for yelling, but it is that important). So, my recommended steps are: IMMEDIATELY stop using that disk. Run, do not walk, and install ddrescue if you don't already have it. Read the man page for ddrescue. Your minimal command line is 'ddrescue /dev/sda /path/sda.ddrescue /anotherpath/ddrescue.log', where sda is the bad drive, /path/ is a path to a place on a different drive and 'sda.ddrescue' is the file that will hold a full image of that drive, /anotherpath/ is, well, another path (if desired to be different than /path/, but at least on a different drive than the bad one) and ddrescue.log is where ddrescue keeps its, well, log. You really want to include the log, or its not nearly as useful. A possible modification of this is to ddrescue each PARTITION rather than the entire drive, giving you one file per partition. This allows you to MOUNT that partition later and copy stuff off, rather than requiring a drive that can accept the dd image of a different full drive. (I've started doing it this way for all my DD images, even if I compress them for storage. Allows you to mount the image (when uncompressed, at least - I've not tried mounting a compressed image), and reduces the requirements on the destination drive when you get around to copying to a new drive. Also, it allows you to skip partitions you know are not needed, like swap space) Rusty (Who has used ddrescue on a drive that only worked when in (what amounted to) a freezer and which had 2 or 3 unreadable blocks, but which copy was completely usable after ddrescue finished) -----Original Message----- From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of kitepilot Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2014 8:59 AM To: Main PLUG discussion list Subject: Re: Is my hard drive hosed? My first check: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null If no errors then: maybe... YMMV ET Mark Phillips writes: > I have been having some issues lately on an older server.....just > found this in dmesg with I realized the file system was read only.... > > [ 1295.874963] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action > 0x0 [ 1295.875032] ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x5 [ 1295.875084] ata4.00: > failed command: READ DMA [ 1295.875139] ata4.00: cmd > c8/00:08:08:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 dma > 4096 in > [ 1295.875141] res 51/40:00:0e:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 Emask 0x9 > (media error) > [ 1295.875266] ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1295.875315] ata4.00: > error: { UNC } [ 1295.896422] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ > 1295.912627] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1295.912645] ata4: EH > complete [ 1299.838082] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 > action 0x0 [ 1299.838142] ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x5 [ 1299.838192] > ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA [ 1299.838248] ata4.00: cmd > c8/00:08:08:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 dma > 4096 in > [ 1299.838250] res 51/40:00:0e:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 Emask 0x9 > (media error) > [ 1299.838375] ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1299.838424] ata4.00: > error: { UNC } [ 1299.860448] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ > 1299.876673] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1299.876696] ata4: EH > complete [ 1303.856909] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 > action 0x0 [ 1303.856967] ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x5 [ 1303.857018] > ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA [ 1303.857074] ata4.00: cmd > c8/00:08:08:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 dma > 4096 in > [ 1303.857076] res 51/40:00:0e:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 Emask 0x9 > (media error) > [ 1303.857201] ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1303.857250] ata4.00: > error: { UNC } [ 1303.880448] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ > 1303.896764] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1303.896786] ata4: EH > complete [ 1307.865671] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 > action 0x0 [ 1307.865730] ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x5 [ 1307.865781] > ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA [ 1307.865836] ata4.00: cmd > c8/00:08:08:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 dma > 4096 in > [ 1307.865838] res 51/40:00:0e:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 Emask 0x9 > (media error) > [ 1307.865962] ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1307.866011] ata4.00: > error: { UNC } [ 1307.888427] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ > 1307.904843] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1307.904866] ata4: EH > complete [ 1311.791898] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 > action 0x0 [ 1311.791957] ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x5 [ 1311.792018] > ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA [ 1311.792074] ata4.00: cmd > c8/00:08:08:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 dma > 4096 in > [ 1311.792075] res 51/40:00:0e:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 Emask 0x9 > (media error) > [ 1311.792198] ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1311.792247] ata4.00: > error: { UNC } [ 1311.816427] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ > 1311.832872] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1311.832893] ata4: EH > complete [ 1315.745297] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 > action 0x0 [ 1315.745356] ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x5 [ 1315.745407] > ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA [ 1315.745462] ata4.00: cmd > c8/00:08:08:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 dma > 4096 in > [ 1315.745464] res 51/40:00:0e:0b:98/00:00:00:00:00/e3 Emask 0x9 > (media error) > [ 1315.745588] ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1315.745637] ata4.00: > error: { UNC } [ 1315.768422] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ > 1315.784891] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1315.784914] sd > 3:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code [ 1315.784917] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] > Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 1315.784921] sd > 3:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor] [ > 1315.784928] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): > [ 1315.784930] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 > [ 1315.784941] 03 98 0b 0e > [ 1315.784946] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - > auto reallocate failed [ 1315.784954] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): > 28 00 03 98 0b 08 00 00 08 > 00 > [ 1315.784965] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 60295950 [ > 1315.785044] ata4: EH complete [ 1315.785068] EXT3-fs error (device > sda1): ext3_get_inode_loc: unable to read inode block - inode=1885681, > block=7536737 [ 1315.785203] Aborting journal on device sda1. > [ 1315.785860] Remounting filesystem read-only [ 1315.895542] EXT3-fs > error (device sda1) in ext3_new_blocks: Journal has aborted [ > 1315.895634] EXT3-fs error (device sda1) in ext3_orphan_add: Journal > has aborted [ 1316.207259] EXT3-fs error (device sda1) in > ext3_reserve_inode_write: IO failure [ 1316.207328] EXT3-fs error > (device sda1) in ext3_new_inode: IO failure [ 1316.207386] EXT3-fs > error (device sda1) in start_transaction: Journal has aborted [ > 1316.207460] EXT3-fs error (device sda1) in ext3_create: IO failure > > > Any suggestions on how to pull off the important data before too late? > > Thanks, > > Mark --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss