Questions tagged [hard-drive]

Questions about hard drives, configuring and formatting them. Hard drives typically provide stateful memory storage for computers, and are the primary location for the operating system and user files.

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Why is my harddrive louder, when I use Windows, compared to linux?

This is something I noticed: When I use Windows, my hard drive is louder and running almost all the time. In Ubuntu on the other hand, it runs quieter and more seldom. This even applies, when I ...
woodfrog's user avatar
  • 136
8 votes
1 answer
2k views

Filesystem fuse slow

I purchased a Maxtor M3 external HDD 4TB, 2,5'. The filesystem is of type fuse. I need to use this HDD only for backup purpose, by copying manually the files about few times a months (average 10 GB ...
user2342558's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
12k views

External drive with one bad sector

After one day with my External drive which stopped working, today, without doing anything, it's working again and I'm very glad. But, when I checked the Disk I saw this On assessment it says: Disk ...
123's user avatar
  • 551
8 votes
1 answer
33k views

Give more Hard disk space to Ubuntu

I know my question has been asked quite a few times on this forum but I am not sure if my situation is similar to what was described in those threads hence I decided to create a different one. Anyway ...
Pham Quang Tuyen's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
9k views

I have 4 bad sectors on my hard disk, should I be worried?

I use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Here are some screenshots that depict the condition of my hard drive. It shows that my hard drive has 4 bad sectors. Is this something to worry about? Is there any way to solve ...
akshay's user avatar
  • 149
8 votes
2 answers
7k views

Hard drive light is constantly on. What's using it? [closed]

The HDD light is lit solid all day and the system has slowed significantly. Running i7 with 15.3Gb RAM on 10.04 Read though many threads online and checked the I/O which seems to be negligible and ...
Guage's user avatar
  • 111
8 votes
2 answers
3k views

Is it safe to leave the /home folder on an SSD?

I just got a new laptop which came with a 500 GB SSD and a 1000 GB HDD. On the SSD there was a Windows 10 installation. I partitioned the SSD and now have both Windows 10 and Ubuntu installed on it. I ...
orrymr's user avatar
  • 195
8 votes
2 answers
21k views

Accessing second hard drive

So I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit on my computer. I installed it on my 60gb SSD hard drive, and in the installation it never acknowledged the existence of my second hard drive. The hard ...
Jon Cox's user avatar
  • 183
8 votes
3 answers
13k views

ddrescue: safe to stop while "Splitting failed blocks"?

Trying to clone a failing disk with ddrescue sudo ddrescue -r 3 /path/to/home /destination/ logfile It's been running for about 10 days! Now it's Splitting failed blocks and hasn't read anything ...
Ananth Pattabiraman's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
37k views

Create one partition occupying all the space on the drive with gparted?

I am following the instructions here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingANewHardDrive It says: 4) Create one partition occupying all the space on the drive: (parted) mkpart primary ...
User's user avatar
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7 votes
4 answers
15k views

Botched upgrade--dpkg hangs on 'Started Braille Device Support'

Screwed up an upgrade from 14.10->15.04->15.10 badly. I've been messing around in recovery mode and am confidentish that I managed to get all the broken packages/dependencies removed and reinstalled, ...
neph's user avatar
  • 325
7 votes
2 answers
39k views

Installing Ubuntu OS on SSD and install HOME on other HDD [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: What's a good partition method to combine an SSD boot drive with a 1TB data drive? I have a SSD with "only" 128GB. I already have Windows 7 and some apps installed on it. ...
Nicolai Larsen's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
17k views

Find what program/process is writing to disk and what file it is writing to [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How to tell what applications are accessing the hard drive and how frequently? I left my desktop untouched for period of time. The HDD led still flashes every second and makes ...
Dfr's user avatar
  • 193
7 votes
2 answers
5k views

Writes occurring to fresh ext4 partition every second endlessly. Cause and solution?

I've an external 500GB HDD connected to my Laptop which runs Ubuntu 12.04. I've formatted the external drive with one ext4 partition which spans the entire disk. My problem is that the disk makes ...
Daniel S.'s user avatar
  • 335
7 votes
6 answers
23k views

Recommended storage scheme for home server? (LVM/JBOD/RAID 5...)

Are there any guidelines for which storage scheme(s) makes most sense for a multiple-disk home server? I am assuming a separate boot/OS disk (so bootability is not a concern, this is for data storage ...
j-g-faustus's user avatar
  • 5,538
7 votes
6 answers
88k views

How to add a second hard drive to an already installed Xubuntu 14.04?

I want to know how to install a second hard drive in Xubuntu 14.04. Taking in mind that I already installed Xubuntu in another hard drive. I just want to add more storage to it. Also the other hard ...
jart's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
1k views

What are the fields in the "Format Partition" window in the Disks utility for, and what do I choose?

I use 14.04 and I have 2 physical partitions, one of 243Gb and another of rest of 500Gb. I want to format the partition of 243Gb using Disks (Open dash and type disks). This partition contains another ...
Apurva's user avatar
  • 441
7 votes
5 answers
38k views

Can't mount HFS+ drive, bad superblock?

My Macbook (Snow Leopard OS) was giving me the rainbow wheel of death so I tried booting into safe mode and repairing the disk, with no luck. So I decided to pull the drive out and plug it into my ...
phandolin's user avatar
  • 451
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

used space in a new empty partition

I've created an extended partition (ext4) on one of my hard-disks. here is what it looks like: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdc5 158G 5,9G 144G 4%...
sterz's user avatar
  • 556
7 votes
2 answers
17k views

Moving /home with LVM

I currently have Ubuntu 16.04 Server installed on a machine with a small 96-GB SSD. That's no longer enough space for all of the users on the server, so I'd like to add a 1-TB HDD and move the /home ...
tonysdg's user avatar
  • 265
7 votes
1 answer
9k views

How to partition a small SSD alongside an HDD when installing Ubuntu

There is both a HDD and a 24GB SSD in my Ultrabook. I will install Windows (for testing in feature, as its free in university) in the HDD. I need to decide what to do with Ubuntu, as its the system ...
Emin Mastizada's user avatar
7 votes
4 answers
2k views

How do you limit root partition disk access to allow drive to go into standby mode?

When there are no users on my system, I would like the hard disk to spindown to low-power state. I realize that this might not be 100% achievable for a straight 24 hours, but it seems reasonable that ...
cmcginty's user avatar
  • 5,878
7 votes
1 answer
7k views

How to turn off one of SATA HDDs installed in the computer to save power?

I have bought an SSD to replace my HDD to make my Xubuntu 16.10 laptop faster but there is hardly too much of space on it so I've decided to keep the old big HDD as a second drive replacing the DVD+RW ...
Ivan's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
3k views

Are there any advantages/disadvantages (if any?) in running luksFormat on raw drive (sdx) vs a partition (sdx1)?

I've been setting up a few LUKS encrypted drives and noticed that I've been creating the encrypted disk directly on the 'raw'(?) drive, ie. /dev/sdb, while many examples via google are showing it ...
Jonathan's user avatar
  • 173
7 votes
4 answers
74k views

What does "blk_update_request: I/O error" mean?

I was copying some files to an external hard drive and during that dmesg outputed this: [76668.241387] sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [76668.241392] ...
GreggD's user avatar
  • 1,124
7 votes
2 answers
9k views

Can I transfer my mdadm Software raid to a new system in case of hardware failure?

I have minimal experience with mdadm and software RAID, but I have a Dell Poweredge T110 II with two separate RAID 0 arrays, a total of two drives each array. I'm anxious that the software setup won'...
ezgoodnight's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
48k views

How to repair an external harddrive?

I would like to reformat my hard disk, and if possible recover the (somewhat unimportant) contents if possible. I have a Western Digital 1TB hard drive which had a NTFS partition. I unplugged the ...
dodohjk's user avatar
  • 1,481
7 votes
2 answers
6k views

Is Disk Utility reliable?

I'm using ubuntu 11.04. Disk utility is reporting I have a bad sector on my hard drive. Is this reliable? I'm skeptical that it's reporting accurately because When I googled "ubuntu disk utility ...
bmaupin's user avatar
  • 4,930
7 votes
1 answer
3k views

Kubuntu 11.04 + Windows 7 dual boot laptop drive encryption

I already know how to create a Kubuntu/Win7 dual boot. What I would like to do is to encrypt both operating systems. I use Kubuntu as my main OS, and Windows 7 for casual gaming or prolonged Visual ...
Vivo's user avatar
  • 121
7 votes
2 answers
19k views

In which directory should I permanently mount a drive?

I have SSD and HDD. I installed my OS on the SSD and created Ext 4 partition on my HDD which I want to permanently mount on the OS. I know it's done through fstab but I don't know in which directory ...
BlackSova's user avatar
  • 373
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

Setting up a shared media drive

I want to have a shared media drive be transparently usable to all users, whilst also sticking to FHS and Ubuntu standards. The former takes priority if necessary. I currently mount it at /media/Stuff ...
Sam Brightman's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
12k views

How to check/enable the full speed of SATA drive/port?

Recently I've got mSata SSD and install it in my laptop. According to the specification of this SSD, the read rate is approximately 450 MB/s. I tested the read rate (in menu Application > ...
Chaosor's user avatar
  • 373
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Very slow copying Ubuntu 12.10, AHCI

I have two disks, SSD (Samsung 830 128GB) and normal HDD (WD 1TB) and Ubuntu 12.10 installed. AHCI enabled in the BIOS. I have a problem with extremely slow copying in all directions (Samsung->Samsung,...
Mat's user avatar
  • 289
7 votes
3 answers
21k views

'Unable to mount Filesystem' Error

Trying to extract data from a 'bricked' Western Digital MyBook Live 2tb drive. I came across a forum that advised to use Ubuntu (booted from a CD) on my Macbook. Managed to download and create a ...
Charles's user avatar
  • 71
7 votes
1 answer
11k views

SELF-TEST Failed

I recently (approx 6m) bought a refurbished laptop online, which had two hard disks installed. I installed Ubuntu on one of them and run the laptop as a dual-boot Windows/Linux machine - this has been ...
John Smizz's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
5k views

Stop jbd2 writing to hdd

I have /dev/sdb as a storage drive. (used very rarely) I would like to use TLP or hdparm to power it off when not used to save power. However when I monitor disk's activity with watch iostat -d /dev/...
Aku506's user avatar
  • 103
6 votes
5 answers
3k views

How do I identify the partitions of my hard drive in order to then shred them all?

I need to safely format my hardrive. I booted from a usb key and I am planning to run the following command on the whole hard drive: sudo shred -v -n3 -z /dev/the-partition My question is: how do I ...
nourdine's user avatar
  • 225
6 votes
5 answers
2k views

Which is the best hard drive to install Ubuntu on? [closed]

I have a 40 gig drive and a 200 gig drive. Which one should I install Ubuntu on, and which one should I use for my normal files ie: music, documents, etc...
myersg's user avatar
  • 101
6 votes
2 answers
9k views

It is safe to have a swap partition on the SSD? [duplicate]

As I'm planning to buy an SSD and replace my old mechanical hard drive, I've heard rumors that having swap partition can decrease the life of SSD. So is this true? Or can I still have a swap partition ...
Rajesh Chaudhary's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
33k views

Removing a bad sector from an NTFS partition. Badblocks gave me an output. now what?

I used badblocks to scan a partition on my hdd for bad sectors and it gave me the following output ...from what I understand it looks like "one scratch on the hdd" ... anyways I can't partition with ...
842Mono's user avatar
  • 9,790
6 votes
4 answers
75k views

How can I list the hard drive and all its partitions including size from terminal?

I have Ubuntu server 12.04 installed with no GUI. I would like to list my hard drive and it's partitions along with how big each partition is using the command line.
Cam Jones's user avatar
  • 3,731
6 votes
3 answers
25k views

Cannot create new folders - Ubuntu on VirtualBox

I've just installed Ubuntu using VirtualBox on Windows 7, and everything went fine. I'm trying to add new folders using the default file manager Nautilus, but: Create New Folder is disabled in any ...
Robin Rodricks's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
16k views

System locking up with suspicious messages about hard disk

My system has started behaving strangely, intermittently locking up. I see messages like the following in syslog: Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078156] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 ...
Chris Conway's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
77k views

Can I install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with less than 25GB hard disk space? [duplicate]

I have a limited amount of free disk space left on my machine, (around 9 - 10 GB), and I would like to try out the latest Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my computer, so my question is that, Is it possible to ...
Abdul Basit Mehtab's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
7k views

Moving 11.10 complete system to a new bigger Harddisk [duplicate]

I would like to move my current installation of Ubuntu 11.10 to a bigger harddisk, since the old one is failing. I would like to avoid solutions like dd block copying (since there would be unused ...
pl1nk's user avatar
  • 6,399
6 votes
2 answers
15k views

Add new hard drive to mirror existing LVM drive with raid1

I have a 320GB hard drive with an LVM2 volume group that was created as part of the default installation. If I put a second 320GB hard drive into the computer, can I make the second drive mirror the ...
murgatroid99's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
3k views

How to truly secure a hard-drive?

When I boot from an USB stick into my laptop I am able to mount and connect through chroot to the my hard drive and browse my files without a problem, while this has been something very very useful in ...
amosrivera's user avatar
  • 1,226
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

I want to reinstall Ubuntu on a new drive and keep my personal data on the old drive

I'm pretty new to Linux. I've bought myself an old PC on which I installed Ubuntu. I followed a tutorial and managed to install it. I should note that the PC came with an old HDD. Now I have my movie ...
King1212's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
43k views

How can I convert a drive from ext4 to NTFS without losing the data?

I have a hard drive from an Ubuntu system that contains only media files. I would like to move that drive to a Windows 10 computer without losing all of the media. Is this possible, and if so, how can ...
Josh's user avatar
  • 345
6 votes
2 answers
3k views

Is there a manufacturer unique identifier on a hard drive and how do I read that identifier?

I understand the concept of a file system UUID. Is there a manufacturer unique identifier on a hard drive, apart from the file system UUID, and how do I read that identifier?
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