Thanks for such a fast reply, Tim.  I shall shut down more often than usual, 
rather than less than usual.

Lisi

On Saturday 08 October 2011 23:17:23 Timothy Pearson wrote:
> > 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.