I’m afraid that the old IBM Deskstar drive is getting close to old age. Even though fast (7200rpm) and adequate (40GB) for the Linux server, its spindle motor is making a small whining sound now – I wouldn’t have noticed if not for the very-quiet Antec case and fan it is housed in.
Anyway, it’s time to move it up. The original plan is to clone the content to a bigger Seagate 80GB drive I have. It worked with the help of dd – wonderful little Linux command that clones partition very slowly but surely. But I became too ambitious and wanted to try out the new Fedora Core 4… Long story short, it is working now after I figured out how the new security model in seLinux works.
Just noticed updating is not working with Yahoo.
I ran “smartctl” from time to check the hard drive healthy index as “S.M.A.R.T.” tool reports it.
There is a item called “Number of Hours in Drive Life:”. I had the impression that people consider the estimate being fairly accurate when the number is small. say 100 hours.
Good idea. The IBM drive is still working ok. It is really the motor noise that bothers me. The new 7200rpm drives now all quiet motor technique. BTW, if you can find a few deserted 7200rpm drives, you can make a very powerful toy race car with those motors.