On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<1156859110.26341.0@damia.uk.clara.net>, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

>Bernard wrote:

>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:

>>> Bernard wrote:

>>>> '/dev/hda5 contains a filesystem with errors ! check forced...

>>> Essentially it looks like the disk is falling apart.
>>>
>>> Get a new disk, and reinstall on that.

>> Yes, but then, why did this happen last june on /dev/hdc3 and now in
>> /dev/hda5 ? These are two different disks (my PC has 3, the third one
>> being hdb). It seems curious that, after 8 years of good service, both
>> disks would give up at the same time or just about... I have heard of PC
>> lasting 15 years or more...

>Mmm. We generally found SCSI disks gave up about 5 years in..

That's nice. Assuming I keep the drives at a reasonable case temperature,
I haven't had that many disk failures. The primary disk on this
workstation is a WD from 1996, and has been running virtually continuously
since new. The drive on the 386SX firewall at home is a Maxtor 213 Meg that
is nearly 19 years old.

>But don't discount the possibility that something - dust, temperature,
>or even a power failure - has damaged both at the same point.

>However another possibility - that of a failing SCSI controller - exists..

How would a failing SCSI controller effect IDE disks?

>The answer there is to borrow someone else's SCSI machine and try and
>mount and fsck the drives on that.

How did you get onto SCSI, when the system having problems is using IDE?
Is that a "whoosh" bird I hear? Since the mid-90s, the IDE controller
(such as it is) has been part of the South-Bridge of the motherboard
chip set. If that's having problems, it's a "chuck the motherboard into
the trash" time.

Old guy