Hi, In a bit more than a year, my parent's laptop stopped booting after fsck a partition three times now. After the first time I installed 10.3. Later I manually ran fsck and let it repair the partition. Since I never had this on several other PC's I suspect the disk is dying so I ran smartctl's extended test. This is the result : smartctl version 5.37 [i686-suse-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Hitachi Travelstar 80GN family Device Model: IC25N040ATMR04-0 Serial Number: MRG257K2FE52NH Firmware Version: MO2OAD0A User Capacity: 40,007,761,920 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 6 ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a Local Time is: Mon Mar 2 05:32:07 2009 CET SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. Total time to complete Offline data collection: ( 645) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. No Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 37) minutes. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 062 Pre-fail Always - 0 2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 105 105 040 Pre-fail Offline - 5848 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 142 142 033 Pre-fail Always - 2 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 2500 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 118 118 040 Pre-fail Offline - 37 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 094 094 000 Old_age Always - 2824 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 2499 191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x000a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 35 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 077 077 000 Old_age Always - 232009 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 137 137 000 Old_age Always - 40 (Lifetime Min/Max 7/53) 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 2764 - # 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1 - # 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 - Warning! SMART Selective Self-Test Log Structure error: invalid SMART checksum. SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay. I don't see any indication of a dying disk. Am I missing something ? Any reason why there would be errors on the disk (besides hard-resetting the PC, which they did not do) ? Thanks for any information. -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong