How do I know that my harddisk is ok and how to recover?

[Henry Chua]

I experienced a system crash earlier, but was able to recue the system with fsck command. However I ran a dd on the hardisk with 'of=/dev/null' it prompted i/o error. Does this mean that my harddisk is faulty. But if this is the case why am I still able to mount and access the PV.

IF a change of harddrive is imminent, how shall I proceed in doing it? - this PV does not contain vital system LVs.

[Cheryl Griffin · Accepted solution]

Replace the disk and use vgcfgrestore to restore the LVM information, restore data from a backup.

[Henry Chua]

Hi Guys,

As I am able to access the data in the pv, can i trust those data and back them up?

How can I be certain that the disk is really faulty?

thanks!

[Sunil Sharma_1]

Hi

If you are able to access data without any errors then it must be good.

There is no hard rule to check the Disk Media and you alredy test it using dd and i believe that is the best test.

Sunil

[Pete Randall]

Using dd is the classic way to check a disk's status. If you get an I/O error, there is a problem with the disk and it needs to be replaced. The fact that you can access your data is simply a fortunate break. The data doesn't reside in the faulty area of the disk - yet! Use this bit of fortune to get a good backup of your data, get the disk replaced and get the data restored before you do have problems.


Pete