Seagate Hard Drive Weirdness

[jglen490]

So I recently took over a Toshiba Satellite A135 (yeah, not the greatest specs, but that's not the question). It had been running Windows 7 pretty well. The hard drive as I learned was a Seagate "hybrid" 500 GB unit. I dumped Win 7 and was going to install Linux Mint or some other flavor of Ubuntu - I had several ISOs. So I tried Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon first. The install went south quickly, it simply dragged on and when I looked at a terminal it seemed to be throwing a lot of write errors. O.k., so I then tried Kubuntu 16.04.2. MOTS. I tried Lubuntu, then a minimal Ubuntu, and tried to modify the boot line to eliminate starting Ubiquity, and then finally some other small distros I had hanging around. The little ones sort of worked, but pretty much MOTS. I finally tried Vector Linux 7.0 Light.

Older than dirt with a 2.8.-something kernel. It installed, but was a sad user experience.

I ran fsck and even badblocks on the Seagate - everything reported the drive as good. I could write partitions on the Seagate with a GParted CD I had on hand. But could simply not install a distro with a fairly up to date kernel. The Seagate Momentus XT I found out has a strange cache mechanism that sort of resembles an SSD that rides on top of the spinning mechanism. This sounded strange, so I went down the street to Best Buy and bought a plain Jane, vanilla WD 500 GB drive. Then I started all over again with a Lubuntu DVD.

Boom! It installed in (relatively) no time flat, and I runs well (poor laptop specs notwithstanding).

So has anyone else run into this "hybrid" drive mechanism before (Seagate, or any other maker)?

[vinnywright]

you should run a SMART test on the Seagate drive ,,,it sounds like it's failing ,,,,,,

see

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools

VINNY

[jglen490]

you should run a SMART test on the Seagate drive ,,,it sounds like it's failing ,,,,,,

see

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools

VINNY

O.K., that's cool info. I appreciate your input, but the laptop now has a hard drive that works!

So assuming that SMART is a good predictor of when a drive is failing, and is more reliable than fsck, and is more reliable than doing an actual write with badblocks, then it's possible that the Seagate may be failing. I guess the puzzlement to me is why I could do an actual install of an old Linux (Vector 7 Light) sandwiched in between failed installs of several different *buntu-based Linux distros, using the same EXT4 format and partitioning scheme for all.

At this point the Seagate is out of the laptop and the WD is working. Since smartmontools requires an actual working Linux environment, I may try to find an external case to connect the Seagate to either the laptop or my desktop and try the tools. Some time!

Thank you.

[jglen490]

O.K., I found a SATA enclosure and ran a smartmontools test. No errors. So it's O.K. and not (at this moment anyway) failing.

It's just weird.

[GreyGeek]

O.K., I found a SATA enclosure and ran a smartmontools test. No errors. So it's O.K. and not (at this moment anyway) failing.

It's just weird.

Sometimes a cosmic ray comes plowing through your equipment and triggers momentary instabilities. IIRC, every sq centimeter gets one cosmic ray every 10 seconds. Evaluation of past cosmic ray influxes points to them being the cause of the mass extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna and several genera of smaller mammals and birds. But, your WD seemed to have survived and didn't extinct!

[Snowhog]

It's also possible that the 'hybrid' nature of that drive isn't fully compatible with Kubuntu.

[GreyGeek]

Now you're just using common sense. What fun is that?

[jglen490]

It's also possible that the 'hybrid' nature of that drive isn't fully compatible with Kubuntu.

Whatever that "nature" is, yep! All of the *buntus failed to load, so there's a kernel module perhaps that just is not giving what the drive expects to see. It's O.K. and it's still a working drive so my son can re-use it in his Windows world ...

[jglen490]

Sometimes a cosmic ray comes plowing through your equipment and triggers momentary instabilities. IIRC, every sq centimeter gets one cosmic ray every 10 seconds. Evaluation of past cosmic ray influxes points to them being the cause of the mass extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna and several genera of smaller mammals and birds. But, your WD seemed to have survived and didn't extinct!

I've never had bad mojo with a Seagate, until now, but WD has always pulled through. Just like the Man of Steel. Oh, you said "cosmic", not "comic". My bad )

[vinnywright]

OR ,,,,,,maybe it was the cable not seated well ,or oxidation on the connections of the cable ,,,or it just needed a bit of a shake to free up a semi stuck head reader ,,,,,,,lots of possibilities

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Good points, Vinny!

Just out of curiosity, it would be interesting to see if Btrfs was used instead of Ext4.

[vinnywright]

I guess the puzzlement to me is why I could do an actual install of an old Linux (Vector 7 Light) sandwiched in between failed installs of several different *buntu-based Linux distros, using the same EXT4 format and partitioning scheme for all.

Good points, Vinny!

Just out of curiosity, it would be interesting to see if Btrfs was used instead of Ext4.

looks like ,,,,no

I know you like BTRFS and so do I ,,,,,,,,,,but we are professional geeks ,,, I do not think the average person installing and playing at linux knows much if anything about BTRFS ,,,,or even much about ext*

and if they have heard of btrfs it would sound like a strange thing and say,,,,,"well ext4 is standard so I'll use that" ,,,,,,,,,,kind of response .

VINNY

[jglen490]

looks like ,,,,no

I know you like BTRFS and so do I ,,,,,,,,,,but we are professional geeks ,,, I do not think the average person installing and playing at linux knows much if anything about BTRFS ,,,,or even much about ext*

and if they have heard of btrfs it would sound like a strange thing and say,,,,,"well ext4 is standard so I'll use that" ,,,,,,,,,,kind of response .

VINNY

I really shouldn't take offense, but I will ...

So your assumption is either that I'm technologically ignorant, or BTRFS is clearly superior simply because it is new and everyone should use only what is new. Both are simply foolish. And I'm done.

[GreyGeek]

...

So your assumption is either that I'm technologically ignorant, or BTRFS is clearly superior simply because it is new and everyone should use only what is new. Both are simply foolish. And I'm done.

Neither statement was meant the way you are taking it. We're not RTFM type of people around here.

[vinnywright]

I really shouldn't take offense, but I will ...

So your assumption is either that I'm technologically ignorant, or BTRFS is clearly superior simply because it is new and everyone should use only what is new. Both are simply foolish. And I'm done.

Absolutely not .

I quoted your original post to show that you had already stated that the file system was ext4 ,,,,in response to GG's question ,,,,and then took a jab at him not you .

GG and I are old friends around hear ,,,,,and my comments had nothing to do with you.

BUT I will apologize if I offended you in any way , it was certainly not my intent , you obviously are not "technologically ignorant" ,you had several installs going on at once using the same partitioning scheme to test the install failure's in a cohesive environment .

VINNY