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After running GSmartControl, I received three checksum errors on my storage hard disk.

Error in Attribute Data structure: checksum error

Error in Attribute Thresholds structure: checksum error

Error in ATA Error Log structure: checksum error

Does this indicate a hard disk failure?

Because, this is the THIRD TIME I have replaced the same hard disk. (after seeing this error)

The hard disk is a Western Digital Caviar Green. (2 TB)

2 Answers 2

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It indicates that either the drive is returning bad SMART information, or GSmartControl is broken and doesn't understand it. Try the disk utility that comes with Ubuntu and see if it can read the SMART data. My suspicion is that GSmartControl is broken since I also have a WD Caviar Green ( 1.5 TB ) and it works fine.

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  • Hmm interesting...When running smartctl from the command line, I received "No Errors Logged" ---- So it would appear that your theory was correct and the GUI was the problem... Is there any other way to check this?
    – Ademos
    Jan 30, 2011 at 16:59
  • Yes, as I said before, run the disk utility that comes with Ubuntu.
    – psusi
    Jan 31, 2011 at 14:14
  • Thanks for the response --- I'm running Kubuntu not Ubuntu, but if you can give me the official name of the software you're thinking of, I can try it and report back.
    – Ademos
    Feb 6, 2011 at 1:58
  • @Ademos it calls itself just "Disk Utility" and comes in the gnome-disk-utility package.
    – psusi
    Feb 6, 2011 at 16:21
  • Thanks! --- After installing "gnome-disk-utility" on Kubuntu, I was able to learn that my hard disks are INDEED healthy.
    – Ademos
    Feb 18, 2011 at 5:22
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No, I don't believe this indicates a bad hard drive. I think these errors indicate that either SMART isn't switched on in your bios or that the hard drives don't really have that capability. My guess is that they're reading in random bytes or zeros.

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  • Well after running smartctl from the command line, the software told me that SMART was available AND turned on. ---- smartctl also reported no errors... As I asked below, is there any other way to check this? Or does this mean all is well?
    – Ademos
    Jan 30, 2011 at 17:03

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