Harddisk kliks -> System freezes/reboots

[Tony Nelson]

At 11:43 AM +0100 1/21/07, Rolf Gerrits wrote:
>My harddisk says "klick" ( parking I presume ) for no apparent reason (
>that I can think of ) and my freezes or reboots.
>I cannot find any hints in the logfiles what causes this.
>
>I need some hints / suggestions where to look / test I can do / ....
>before I buy a new harddisk.
>.... I am going nuts with this....
>
>Info:
>1. just my desktop ( gnome ) will crash after 1-2 days
>2. if I reset - due to a freeze - sometimes the harddisk says "click"
>BEFORE Grub starts (sits on MBR) .
>3. This started after I installed GKrellM (could be a coincedent) ....
>removing GKrellM did not solve anything (maybe broke something ? )
>4. I removed "hddtemp" and "cpufreq" services ( the latter won't work
>for my hardware anyway ... so it says )
>5. I have removed some corrupted files and my harddisks are free of
>badbloks or things like that.

It sounds like either the disk is going bad or there is a power supply
problem or some other hardware problem.  Ticking often means that bad
sectors were automatcially remapped by the drive.

SMART can tell you if the disk thinks it is bad.  Try as root "smartctl -a
/dev/hdc" (or whatever device it is).

Power supplies can sometimes be diagnosed with a voltmeter.  Other times
replacement is a better way to tell.  If you've added hardware to the
computer, thus putting more load on the power supply, try removing that
hardware.

Other hardware problems might include memory (use memtest86, by booting
from the install CD) or pretty much anything.
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:tonynelson at georgeanelson.com>
      '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>