[plug] interesting hardware? oddity

[Brad Campbell]

Daniel Pearson (Flashware Solutions) wrote:
> Hi Denis,
> 
> I've commonly seen this when the HDD is starting to fail, developing bad 
> sectors.
> 
> Grab the Ultimate Boot CD [1] and test the HDD using the relevant 
> vendor's utility.

Seconded! Or just boot from ubuntu/knoppix/your fav live cd and do a smart test with smartctl, then 
badblocks non-destructive read or read/write test.

I've seen even weirder behaviour when a drive developed a bad sector right in the middle of the swap 
partition. Took me *weeks* to track that down as I'd get a failure of a daemon or two randomly every 
couple of days. Now when a machine gets possessed the first thing I do is check the smart stats for 
dodgy sectors and do a full drive read test.

Brad
-- 
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability
to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable
for their apparent disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams