Grmbl.

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   064   064   060    Pre-fail  Always       -       224137572

This is my desktop's hard disk. I gather it won't be long before I'll start getting BACKUP YOUR DATA NOW messages in syslog. Guess I'll have to start looking for a new hard disk.

I hate it when that happens. And yes, the disk is dying; I hear it making all kinds of ugly noises it shouldn't be making, and my system is unresponsive while those noises happen.

And then I'm not even mentioning the mails I'm getting from smartd on my laptop, which tells me that there are some unreadable sectors over there. Well—at least SMART has been able to correct for that. For the time being...

Any hard disk manufacturers out there, let me tell you that I wouldn't mind at all buying a slightly smaller (measured in space available on it) and slower disk, provided it increases reliability by a factor two, or so. No, really. My 2GB Quantum Bigfoot that I bought about eight years ago only now begins to break down, whereas every other disk I've had has done so after three years, max. Pity they don't make no Bigfoots anymore.

Update: OK, next time don't post obscure outputs of commands without explaining what they mean. At least not if you don't want your mailbox to overflow an hour later

Look at the "VALUE" column. It says "64", whereas every disk ships with a value of "100" there. Once it gets under 60 ("THRESH"), the SMART bits of the hard disk will start panicking. And given that this value was at about 74 just a few weeks ago, this is bad. Very bad.