One quick way to tell if any partition is currently ‘dead’ is to do an ls of each mounted directory (e.g. if /dev/sdb2 is mounte on /mnt/foo, then ls /mnt/foo)

Let us assume you have 10 partitions mounted, spread all over the various disks, but they are not all someplace handy like /mnt.

So, for a quick ‘hey, is it dead’ sanity check, do this:

ls `df -kh|grep -v 'Mounted on' | awk '{print $NF}'`

If you get no errors, it is not QUITE time to panic J

If you do, you probably found the offending partition(s).  Also, check /var/log/messages after that to see if you see any error messages pointing at a certain drive (even if you don’t see any errors in your ls trick above).

And to the great suggestion of using smartctl (wish *I*’d thought of it!) – if the drive supports SMART that’s the first line of defense – use smartctl.  If not, and the drive is making funny noises, try the above.

Rusty

From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Mike Bushroe
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 1:11 PM
To: PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Subject: RE:hard drive won't shut off

On a similar note, my old desktop system, which has several hardrives of various sizes and ages, has int he last week or two started making on odd sound that I am guessing is the read/write head being pulled back as if to power down, then let back out again. It is clearly not affecting the drive I am running off of, but I do not know of any tool or system monitor that would help me isolate which drive is going. I must apologize in advance for having not yet even attempted to research this on the web. When Mike brought up the general topic, I decided to chime in and see if anyone remembers something that might be useful off the top of their heads. If not, I should be able to tell when it goes hard failure, and it is unlikely to take my main partition with it, so no big deal. Thanks again in advance for the help.

Mike

--
But he lives on in a Horcrux named Siri