Disk failing on Dell Mini, are there diagnostic tools?

Question

my dell mini 10v running Ubuntu 10.10 runs ok for hours, but then will suddenly slow down drastically. Switching to a console shows lots of error messages, which also get into /var/log/syslog. These errors happen every couple of seconds. I'm figuring that the disk is failing, but is there anyway to be sure, and can laptop disks be replaced easily?

Mar 20 11:08:12 dell-mini kernel: [ 2476.378774] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Mar 20 11:08:12 dell-mini kernel: [ 2476.378785] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Mar 20 11:08:12 dell-mini kernel: [ 2476.449841] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Mar 20 11:08:12 dell-mini kernel: [ 2476.449887] ata1: EH complete
Mar 20 11:08:14 dell-mini kernel: [ 2478.777754] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Mar 20 11:08:14 dell-mini kernel: [ 2478.777976] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
Mar 20 11:08:14 dell-mini kernel: [ 2478.778059] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA
Mar 20 11:08:14 dell-mini kernel: [ 2478.778162] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:43:3b:97/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
Mar 20 11:08:14 dell-mini kernel: [ 2478.778166]          res 51/40:00:47:3b:97/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x9 (media error)

Answer 1

If you go to "System" > "Administration" > "Disk Utility", you should see a list of your hard drives.

Click on the drive in question, and you can check the drive for errors, or view the SMART data and have the drive run some of it's own tests.

It doesn't look like the Mini 10v drives are too buried in the computer - they are directly beneath the keyboard, and are pretty easy to access.

Luckily, someone appears to have posted a great hard drive swap video on YouTube for your model that you can use as a guide.

Answer 2

You could also use the tool smartmon to run a extended test.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/using-smartctl-to-get-smart-status-information-on-your-hard-drives/1389