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Solve : Periodic freezing and hard drive issues?

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I upgraded motherboard and processor recently, and during the installation process I ACCIDENTALLY dropped the computer on the floor (NOT a good idea!). SINCE then (or possibly before then) I've been having some bizarre issues that I'm beginning to think are related to the hard drive (but could also be due to the new motherboard):

  • My Ubuntu installation periodically freezes, with the hard drive LED stuck at on. Switching from X to console causes the entire system to lock up. This often happens when using the CD drive.
  • If there is a CD in the disk drive, trying to log into Ubuntu through GDM produces the same freeze.
  • I tried to reinstall Ubuntu (64-bit), having been told that my problems were due to replacing motherboard and processor (an issue I've never had before with Ubuntu due to the breadth of its generic kernel's support). Every time I try to use the partitioner, on desktop or alternate, the disk scan takes ages to complete and fails to detect any partitions on my drive. Otherwise, the drive appears to be working perfectly, and I haven't received any SMART failure warnings.
Is my hard drive on its way out, or is there something else amiss? I'm using an Asus P5Q Premium motherboard, Intel Core2 DUO E8500 on 32-bit Ubuntu 9.04.As you will know, hard drives don't like shocks.  Run the drive manufacturers diagnostics - see this post.

Good luckI ran smartctl, a Linux SMART testing facility, which says that the drive is healthy, but I ran a test and it came up with

Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       40%     12801         9860923

Hmm... read failure.

Here's the contents of smartctl -a /dev/sda -d ata, which displays SMART values:

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)   Offline data collection activity
               was completed without error.
               Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      ( 116)   The previous self-test completed having
               the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:        (2283) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:           (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
               Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
               Suspend Offline collection upon new
               command.
               Offline surface scan supported.
               Self-test supported.
               No Conveyance Self-test supported.
               Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)   Saves SMART data before entering
               power-saving mode.
               Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)   Error logging supported.
               General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:     (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:     ( 118) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   184   182   063    Pre-fail  Always       -       20529
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       1522
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   252   252   063    Pre-fail  Always       -       13
  6 Read_Channel_Margin     0x0001   253   253   100    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0027   249   234   187    Pre-fail  Always       -       57815
  9 Power_On_Minutes        0x0032   217   217   000    Old_age   Always       -       787h+03m
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x002b   253   252   157    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x002b   253   252   223    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   250   250   000    Old_age   Always       -       1549
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0032   050   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       31
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x000a   252   251   000    Old_age   Always       -       53351
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0008   240   240   000    Old_age   Offline      -       13
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0008   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       13
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0008   252   230   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0008   199   199   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate    0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
202 TA_Increase_Count       0x000a   253   251   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
203 Run_Out_Cancel          0x000b   253   252   180    Pre-fail  Always       -       11
204 Shock_Count_Write_Opern 0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
205 Shock_Rate_Write_Opern  0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
207 Spin_High_Current       0x002a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
208 Spin_Buzz               0x002a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
209 Offline_Seek_Performnce 0x0024   240   240   000    Old_age   Offline      -       158
210 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
211 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
212 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0


13 reallocated sectors?
This is also interesting (kern.log):

May 23 23:58:32 hayashi kernel: [46249.924600] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 23 23:58:32 hayashi kernel: [46250.048892] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 24 00:13:35 hayashi kernel: [47153.226057] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 24 00:13:36 hayashi kernel: [47153.381430] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 24 00:14:03 hayashi kernel: [47181.265660] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 24 00:14:04 hayashi kernel: [47181.451978] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 24 00:36:57 hayashi kernel: [48554.788635] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
May 24 00:36:57 hayashi kernel: [48554.912929] sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.Run the Free diagnostics from the drive manuf. site.


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