> On Saturday 08 October 2011 22:10:36 Timothy Pearson wrote:
>> > On Saturday 08 October 2011 19:41:56 Mag. Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
>> >> Well, looks like the harddrive. Get a drive now, your's could fail
>> any
>> >> second.
>> >
>> > I have one on order!
>> >
>> > Lisi
>>
>> In my experience if the drive is going to die completely it will do so
>> without much warning.  The bad sectors you are experiencing are more
>> like
>> a cancer (dying R/W heads, bad disk surface, one or more head crashes in
>> the past, etc.) and will continue to spread.  The less you use the disk
>> the better, as each write access will likely corrupt more sectors.
>
> Thanks, Tim.  I can't afford to not use my main workhorse this week, so I
> must
> just be extra careful with backups of my important data.  Would it be
> likely
> to help if I keep the box running permanently instead of shutting down
> over-night etc.?
>
> Lisi
>

It depends on the failure mode.  If it is a mechanical failure (IMHO less
likely with your symptoms) then keeping the box on 24/7 prevents sudden
mechanical death at power-on.  If it is bad disk material, then shutting
the box down overnight will lessen the amount of corruption from the OS
normally writing its files to the disk.

Tim