I thought someone more knowledgeable than I would have replied to you by 
   now?! I guess I'll take a wack at it!

Chris Frederick wrote:
> I have a server running Mandrake 9.0, 2 Western Digital 60Gig drives,
> and 1 Maxtor 20Gig drive.  Lately I've noticed it making high pitched

You mention the makes and sizes of the drives but you don't mention 
which one is making noise.
> noises (like a disk would make right before it crashes), and the machine
> itself has crashed a few times now.  There's an e2fs error writing to
> certain blocks.  They seem to be random, and in large numbers.  I've ran
> e2fsck, checked for bad blocks in read only mode, and so far it's found

Is the noisy disk the same one that shows write errors?

> nothing.  Changing /etc/fstab to mount all non essential disks read
> only, and removing a good number of cron jobs, will let it run without
> any errors, but that kinda defeats most of the functions of the server
> (backups).
> 
> Is it possible that a disk can fail on a write, but not a read?  Or am I

I would think that this is possible but I don't know.

> getting a different problem (I hope)?  And if it is a disk crash, how
> long would you guess I have till it's no longer readable?  I'm about
> three weeks away from affording a replacement disk.

After you have determined which disk is noisy/has errors my advice would 
depend on what kind of data is on the drive:

      If the data is:
valuable    changes daily     I suggest that you:
---------   -------------  ---------------------------------------
     yes            yes     backup the data ASAP and stop using the drive

     no             yes     replace the drive after it fails

     yes            no      backup the data ASAP and replace the
                            drive when you can

     no             no      replace the drive after it fails
> 
> Thanks all...

-- 
Eric (Rick) Meyerhoff


_______________________________________________
TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list