[Grml] How to use GRML to check whether a hard disk is failing

[Jason White]

Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who replied. It actually turned out not to be the 
> hard disk failing, I had misunderstood what was meant by the person when 
> I spoke to them on the phone. 

For the benefit of the archives (someone will probably discover this thread in
a Web search while looking for solutions to hard disk failures)
smartctl -a /dev/sda
(replacing /dev/sda with the correct device) will tell you whether the SMART
monitoring firmware in the drive has detected hardware/media errors.

As to your other question, computer literacy is always to be preferred.
Knowledge is better than ignorance, and Linux is a great environment in which
to learn.