Is my harddrive dying? initramfs(SOLVED)

[linux_user96]

hello

I have been running Linux Mint 20 on my Laptop for about a year. The laptop is about 7 years old, it was a windows laptop before.

A few months ago, it always showed the "initramfs". With little research I was able to fix this booting problem "fsck". It worked well.

But in the last few days this problem is occuring too often. And when I am able to boot the laptop, almost nothing works properly on it, like I cant open browsers or even delete the browsers with the terminal. And its really slow now.

Is this a sign that the harddrive is giving up?

 

[DexTheDog]

How much space is left on the drive?

 

[linux_user96]

How much space is left on the drive?

I have left 350gb left of 460gb

 

[KGIII]

You can try this:

How To: Check A Disk For Errors • Linux Tips

In today's article, we're going to learn how to check a disk for errors. We'll be using a multi-pronged process to thoroughly check a disk for errors.

linux-tips.us

 

[linux_user96]

I have left 350gb left of 460gb

How much space is left on the drive?

how can knowing this help the problem?

 

[linux_user96]

I have left 350gb left of 460gb

How much space is left on the drive?

how can knowing this help the problem

You can try this:

How To: Check A Disk For Errors • Linux Tips

In today's article, we're going to learn how to check a disk for errors. We'll be using a multi-pronged process to thoroughly check a disk for errors.

linux-tips.us

I tried it. I am stuck now. nothing moves anymore

 

[linux_user96]

how can knowing this help the problem


I tried it. I am stuck now. nothing moves anymore

my bad, it is continuing... more blocks are being added

 

[KGIII]

The test will take a bit but shouldn't be too long on modern hardware. It'll tell you if you have any hardware issues. You can also check out this article that has more options, such as looking for bad blocks.

How To: Check A Disk For Errors • Linux Tips

In today's article, we're going to learn how to check a disk for errors. We'll be using a multi-pronged process to thoroughly check a disk for errors.

linux-tips.us

Which I seemingly elaborated on in its own other article, probably having forgotten the first article due to copious amounts of delicious wine.

How To: Check For Bad Sectors On Your Disks • Linux Tips

Today, we're going to examine one way to check for bad sectors on your disks. Once again, it won't be a particularly taxing article.

linux-tips.us

That'll rule out bad disk issues. So, if you still have the issues after this you can be reasonably certain that it's not a disk that's failing.

 

[DexTheDog]

how can knowing this help the problem?

If in the case that your root directory is full it can cause the system to freeze or not boot.

 

[linux_user96]

If in the case that your root directory is full it can cause the system to freeze or not boot.

./boot needs 1.8gb
./var needs 3.4gb

is this normal?

so what should I delete?

 

[DexTheDog]

./boot needs 1.8gb
./var needs 3.4gb

is this normal?

so what should I delete?

You should have enough space as your disk has free space. Have you ran the disk check KGIII recommended?

 

[linux_user96]

You should have enough space as your disk has free space. Have you ran the disk check KGIII recommended?

I cancelled it, because almost one hour passed and nothing happened anymore... i tried some other things but without success, like deleting cache, deleting old kernels

 

[linux_user96]

I cancelled it, because almost one hour passed and nothing happened anymore... i tried some other things but without success, like deleting cache, deleting old kernels

I ran smartctl

reallocated_sector_ct shows a raw value of 0.

current_pending_sector shows a raw value of 48.

i did research on that: 0 is good and over 0 is bad... over 0 indicates harddrive failure is near. now i am trying a way to fix that

 

[KGIII]

You can also install 'gnome-disk-utility' which will then appear as "Disks" in your application menu.

Once you've done that, you can open it and highlight the drive in question. In the top right, there will be a three dot menu and click on SMART data and self-tests. Then, you can scan from inside that - with a handy GUI.

If there are disk errors, there's no real way to repair them. Disks die and have an MTBF that folks probably should examine before buying. If the disk has errors, it IS GOING TO FAIL. It's just a matter of when.

The advice is generally to stop using the disk, get a new one, and hope you can recover your data from the old one. If you're not getting errors, the problem lies elsewhere - but your drive is going to fail if you are getting errors. It's going to likely fail sooner than later.

You can do a short test and then do a longer test if you're getting errors in the short test. If you see 'pre-fail' don't worry too much about that. It's a problem, but not an immediate problem. The tests take a bit to complete, depending on the age of your computer and the speed of your disk. I'd only bother with the longer test if there's a bunch of failures or a whole lot of pre-fail warnings.

 

[bob466]

If you think the HDD itself has problems...the best way to check is to swap the HDD...if the problem stops then you know...saves a lot of time.

HDDs can fail without warning...even after running heaps of test and getting...HDD is "OK" it's happened to me...you should always have a spare HDD and an Image of the Drive just in case.

This might be a good time to swap to an SSD (say 500GB) as they are so much better and so much faster...I did 3 years ago and would never go back...good luck.