Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB Disk failure - Buffer I/O error on device sda2, logical block 1289 lost page write due to I/O error on sda2

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 10 Oct 2010, at 17:28, Fatih Tümen wrote:
>> ...
>> The noise you're describing is indicative of mechanical failure.
> 
> That I was fearing but I cant understand how it can fail all of a
> sudden. I did not drop it or something. Just ran eix and boom. Would
> you call it a coincidence of running eix with the best before date of
> the disk?

Total coincidence. It has nothing to do with eix - you'll likely be running something on the drive when it fails, that's not what causes the problem.

Most hard-drive failures have nothing to do with being dropped. It's simply that hard-drives spin at 5,000 - 10,000 rpm, about the same speed as a car engine, but unlike a car engine they don't have an oil pump and a radiator and all that stuff to lubricate them.

Hard-drives are simply prone to mechanical failure - wearing out, in other words,

> There is a forensic lab quite close
> to me but I doubt that they would bother with this or whether it would
> worth the effort.

They would probably bother if you paid them enough. I would probably consider $500 cheap, and might well expect to pay twice or several times that. In the cases of clicking drives I've had quite some success with ddrescue for no cost.

Stroller.