Hi,

I can't remember the last time I switched my PC off - probably 6 months or
more ago, but I decided to leave it off over easter. When I turned it back
on again there were disk read errors and I ended up having to replace the
disk.

I assume that the shock of being shut down and restarted was what
precipitated the problem, and I have heard of this happening before on
server machines that never get shut down.

Should I be proactively shutting my PC down every so often to reduce the
chances of this happening, and if so, how often? or was I just really
unlucky?

Andy

"Andy Fish" <ajfish@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:jYJ1g.104795$8Q3.72301@fe1.news.blueyonder.co .uk...
Dunno. Can just easily be said the PC on all the time was masking a looming
fault only seen at boot time.
--
Jonny

"Andy Fish" <ajfish@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:jYJ1g.104795$8Q3.72301@fe1.news.blueyonder.co .uk...
This was a coincidence. I have dealt with a few thousand
machines and I never noticed any correlation between
disk damage and machines being switched off. These days
all disks have an inbuilt head parking mechanism that puts
the read heads into a safe location just before the disks
stops.

If you had checked your Event Viewer then you would
most likely have discovered repeated disk read errors.
If you want to be pro-active then you should examine
your Event Viewer at regular intervals. You can even
script it so that it sends you a list of all errors at regular
intervals.

Jonny:

I heard similar stories.

This was many years ago, and I took over the IT function from someone, and
he told me his war stories. One of them were about machines (PC's and mini's)
that can't start up after being continuously run for months or years. In one
case, he claimed someone told him to remove the drive and stick it a freezer.
Claimed he got it going.

In other cases, its a problem with the drive motor not running at the proper
speed. We used a service that recovers data from bad drives, and was told
that this is the problem sometimes. And in other cases, a drive that appears
bad runs OK after it warms up or after several restarts

And this guy was a fanatic in "backing up", and do fire drills to "restore"
data because he almost lost his job when a drive went, and the backup was no
good. Another IT manager (my boss) actually lost his job when the server went
down, and there was no backup because the tape backup was not properly
programmed and checked out. Turns out the "tape drive" was supposed to be
programmed to rewind, and it was not, and the tape was stuck at the "end of
the tape" for the last six months.

You can try checking out programming the PC to reboot at a certain time each
day, week, or day of the month. Make sure your backup procedures are all
running properly. I got both on-line backup as well as a USB hard drive. And
I found more than once the USB drive "not recognized" (loose wiring) and
backup was not poperly done for a whole week.

Frank

"Jonny" wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Jonny <spamyourself@blackworm.net> wrote:
I agree. You should run a full smart self-test every two weeks or so
on an allways-on system. That way you will get early warning. You
should also log the smart status regularly, that way you have a better
chance of finding out what the actual problem was. It might just be that
the affected disk area had a sector that was slowly getting weak.
If it is read just once before it becomes completely unreadable
the disk will reallocate it. That is the second benefit of regular
surface scans (as a long smart self-test does).

From my experience the only component really at risk during a
rare power-cycle is the PSu, since it is under much more load
during the first seconds after power-on. All other components
are not that critical.

Arno

Andy Fish <ajfish@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote

Was that for lent ? |-(

Its much more likely that the drive was dying and either
the SMART check only happens at boot time or that the
section of the hard drive that was going bad only affected
boot ops so it was going bad and you didnt notice till a reboot.

Yes, it can, for the same reason.

Not in that sense, it doesnt reduce
anything, just gives you more warning.

Nope, just a bit unlucky that since you didnt reboot
much, you never noticed that the drive was dying.

One alternative is to use a better SMART app
that doesnt just check at boot time, or check
the SMART data occasionally, manually instead.

"Arno Wagner" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:4aphkfFuf251U2@individual.net...
No offense or counterpoint meant here.
So for usual folks that read/post at windowsxp.general group, more likely
they don't ever turn their PCs off (standby/hibernate). More than likely,
they have no access or inclination to use any software that checks hard
drive smart data in XP.
So, would these same people turning a PC on and off on daily basis where the
bios does the smart check or the hard drive(s) be a good idea for these?
--
Jonny

"Jonny" <spamyourself@blackworm.net> wrote in message
news:OS3nxjOZGHA.5012@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
I turn my PC off every day. Some of my clients do so too,
others don't. As I said, there appears to be no correlation
for disk failures between the two groups.

"Pegasus (MVP)" <I.can@fly.com> wrote in message
news:ubR8SwOZGHA.3400@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
Maybe the clients aren't inclined to communicate such information for one
reason or another, or, aren't aware of such symptoms.
Similar seen everyday in drive by shootings, pedestrian/bicyclist killing in
car accidents in broad daylight with lotsa people around. Nobody saw
nothing.
--
Jonny

"Jonny" <spamyourself@blackworm.net> wrote in message
news:urM14cPZGHA.4752@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
I know my clients. If one of them reloaded Windows then
I would detect numerous changes from my standard within
the first three minutes of looking at the machine. I stand by
my claim: No correlation between disk failures and switching
machines off every night.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Jonny <spamyourself@blackworm.net> wrote:
Well, reality does not care much what people's inclination is. These
people simply operate their machines at higher risk. But today many
people do. For example a recent test in the german computer magazine
c't found thet of 30 commercial windows backup programs a measly 3
were usable and reliable. The others had basic problems like silent
failures, no verify option or incomplete backups. It seems the average
windows user has no interest in keeping data safe or no clue that data
on a computer is permanently at risk. The horros stories we hear here
regularly (no backup, no SMART checks, no RAID and now the disk has
failed) are likely only the tip of the iceberg.

Unfortunately the BIOS does only check the SMART status, it does not
do a long SMART self-test. That means that rarely used files are still
at risk. This will however make continued bootability and early
detection of systematic problems (i.e. those not limited to specific
sectors) more likely. And it will make PC faliure more likely to
occure in ordinary, as opposed to special, circumstances. Could be a
good thing.

Arno

Arno Wagner <me@privacy.net> wrote:
Thats radically overstating it.

That doesnt make them unusable, they just
need more supervision and log checking.

Thats silly too. Plenty do have backups.

Even sillier, thats the whole iceberg.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage DRE <dre@dre.com> wrote:
Have you read the article?

Arno

Arno Wagner <me@privacy.net> wrote:
Dont need to, I know that YOUR claim is just plain wrong on the
bit you carefully deleted from the quoting and I have restored.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage DRE <dre@dre.com> wrote:
Why would I "carefully delete"? The old article is there for
everybody to look at. I think you don't understand how usenet
works.

You really should have a look at the article. The 3 out of 30 (o.k., I
re-checked , its actually 3 usable ones out of 27) is entirely
accurate and well explained. Most pleople using commercial Windows
backup programs do not have a reliable backup.

For reference: The ones working reasonable well are "Backit Up",
"Trueimage" and "Genie Backup". Mind that these are not perfect,
the are just adequate. But they are not likely to stab you in the
back, unlike the other programs.

Arno

Arno Wagner <me@privacy.net> wrote:
Ask yourself, you did the deleting. Presumably so the
comments I made after that are no longer in the reply.

And its even easier to see those comments
if they arent deleted from the quoting.

Been using it for longer than you have thanks.

No thanks, I know that YOUR claim about how
many of them are usable is just plain wrong.

Pity its just YOU running the line about what is
necessary for a particular app to be USABLE.

And you are just plain wrong on that.

You dont even know what most actually use.

Its completely stupid and pig ignorant to claim
that what comes standard with XP isnt usable.

Sure, some others have definite advantages, but its just plain
silly to claim that what comes standard with XP isnt usable.

I dont need to read that article to know that.

And plenty of others are usable in specific
situations too, like ghost32 for example.

Nothing ever is.

Mindlessly silly. There are others that
wont do that if you use them properly.

Anyone with a clue checks the log file for example.