66

I noticed that my Ubuntu is lagging EXTREMELY badly but only the first time I do things after what I did gets loaded into RAM the lag stops totally. I ran some tests and I guess one of my laptop hard drives is borked.

Im assuming that I have to replace the drive, is there some command I can issue to see the exact specs on the drive so I can then buy it online?

I don't want to have to open up the laptop, find the specs. Then open it again when the new drive arrives.

3
  • Or is there another cool hacky command or way to partition my drive to avoid using the bad spots? A while ago when my drive failed I mounted it useing an alternative superblock and this worked and still does i guess.. May 15, 2014 at 13:42
  • 3
    I found the hacky solution I wanted. I ran the command "badblocks /dev/sda1" and then noticed they were all near the front of the drive. So I created an unallocated partition at the front of the drive consisting of 50% of the total size. I then tested the second half of the drive! AND WALAAAAAAAA!!!!!! IT WORKED!!!!! Im going to buy a new drive anyway but this process taught me alot :) May 15, 2014 at 17:01
  • I'm happy for you.
    – avia
    May 15, 2021 at 22:02

5 Answers 5

62

smartctl command from smartmontools package is what you want for that

% sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.13.0-24-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     SAMSUNG SpinPoint M7
Device Model:     SAMSUNG HM250HI
Serial Number:    <snip>
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0024e9 203520f1d
Firmware Version: 2AC101C4
User Capacity:    250,059,350,016 bytes [250 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 6
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Thu May 15 21:49:09 2014 MYT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
1
  • That's a great answer thank you.
    – avia
    May 15, 2021 at 22:02
30

You can use lshw tool :

Install :

sudo apt-get install lshw 

Command for H.D.D Specs:

lshw -class disk -class storage
8
  • 1
    Thanks I hope this helps someone but the first answer was PERFECT so im not even bothering with this, do you know if I can somehow use only part of my hard drive? The hole thing still works but super slow. I know nothing of hardware but maybe there is a way to say only use the good part of the hard drive? Maybe when hard drives go bad only certain portions go bad? May 15, 2014 at 14:06
  • Try to test it for bad boot sectors and repair them .
    – nux
    May 15, 2014 at 14:41
  • ok i will try to help you mate .
    – nux
    May 15, 2014 at 14:47
  • 2
    you are welcome my friend :) happy to hear that
    – nux
    May 15, 2014 at 17:34
  • 2
    On my system this only shows the controllers and not the attached SSD. May 17, 2019 at 20:49
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% sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda                                                                      ~

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       WDC WD10JPCX-24UE4T0                    
        Serial Number:      WD-WXR1E24A7U0E
        Firmware Revision:  01.01A01
        Transport:          Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
        Supported: 9 8 7 6 5 
        Likely used: 9
Configuration:
        Logical         max     current
        cylinders       16383   16383
        heads           16      16
        sectors/track   63      63
        --
        CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
        LBA    user addressable sectors:  268435455
        LBA48  user addressable sectors: 1953525168
        Logical  Sector size:                   512 bytes
        Physical Sector size:                  4096 bytes
        Logical Sector-0 offset:                  0 bytes
        device size with M = 1024*1024:      953869 MBytes
        device size with M = 1000*1000:     1000204 MBytes (1000 GB)
        cache/buffer size  = 16384 KBytes
        Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 5400
1
  • 3
    A simple command that's installed by default with all the info I was looking for. Have an upvote!
    – mkasberg
    Feb 13, 2019 at 5:08
20

You can use lsblk, it has a ton of options that you can use e.g.:

lsblk -o MODEL,SIZE,NAME -d

which gives this result in my case

MODEL              SIZE NAME
Samsung SSD 850  232.9G sda
Samsung SSD 850  931.5G sdb
12

$ lsblk

The command lsblk by default will list all block devices in a tree-like format. Type lsblk --help to see more options

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