Harddrive failing - what to do?

Question

Hi all
I strongly suspect that my laptop harddrive is failing. Sometimes I get
Buffer I/O error on hda
and other errors. I booted the computer with a knoppix cd and ran e2fsck but it quit after some time stating something like
Cannot read sector blah. Ignore?
. I can still boot the computer. Backup of important files have been made.
What should I do to detect for sure, that the drive is failing?
Can I make an image of the disk to put on a new drive, that I have?[/quote]

Answer 1

Just an FYI.  I used to work as a computer forensic examiner, and I taught quite a few people how to conduct investigations.  One of the things that I ran across was people who would intentionally attempt to destroy their hard disks, in which case you get similar errors (but my job was to get the evidence).
As simple as it sounds, if you have a hard disk failing, there are a couple of very simple things you can/should do to to preserve your data.
1.  Turn the computer off until your ready to do a proper backup.  I've seen people simply run bad drives into the ground by 'ignoring' errors or spending lots of time making a diagnosis.  Your first priority is a backup.  Once you've done that, you can fool around with manufacturer tools.
2.  Go buy an identical drive, and do your best to make an image of the original.  dd usually works great, even when there are errors.  If you buy a larger drive, you can dd the original image to the new drive as a file, and then use loopback to mess with the contents of the old drive.  Just don't plug in or power up the damaged drive until your ready to image.
3.  And finally, while your imaging - keep the bad drive sitting upright (on it's side) instead of sitting flat.  In the event you have had heads that have crashed or made contact with the platter surface, putting the drive on it's side minimizes the damage.
Of course, there are more complicated (and expensive options) available, but if you react quickly you can usually save most everything on your drive.