Disk Problems: Advice Welcome

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 12:15:04 -0500,
  RGH <rgheck at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I've been having some strange, but fairly predictable, problems with the
> disks in my system. If disk activity is very heavy for a long
> time---say, I'm downloading a lot of stuff---then, at some point, I
> start to get disk errors and the system will all but freeze up. The
> first sign is often an error from syslogd, saying it can't write to the
> log, but I can also get similar errors from (e.g.) akregator, saying it
> can't write to some file under $HOME. Other operations may continue to
> function at this time: E.g., the download will continue, and I can even
> start another one. But attempts to run commands can abort with
> "Input/Output error"---though not all commands may show this problem.
>
> This looks to me like some kind of hardware issue, but I'm not
> experienced here. Any advice welcome, especially concerning what I might
> do, other than replace the (expensive WD Raptor) disk.

Install smartmontools if it isn't already and run surface scans using
smartctl. If you are getting errors on writes, it doesn't sound good.
You can also try reseating your cables in case it is just a bad connection
for one of the disk cables.