New Hard Drive utility in Ubuntu 9.10 - Palimpsest
Posted by: Ross Larson
on November 04 2009 
One of my machines surprised me when I tossed in my Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD recently. After I chose to run the live environment before installing, Ubuntu decided to give me a notification that I hadn't seen before:
It appears that Ubuntu 9.10 has integrated SMART hard drive monitoring into its notifications. I decided to click the icon for more information, since that's what the window told me to do.
At first, the mouseover told me a little info:
Then, clicking the icon gave me more detail:
BAD SECTORS? Oh no! I clicked the message to find out more. It apparently brings up a utility called "Palimpest Disk Utility":
In addition to showing the drives in my system, it also allows me to test the drives via GUI tools:
I don't remember the last time I was happy to see a failing hard drive! Maybe this tool will make it cool to find a hard drive with bad sectors.
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The utility that I mentioned above is designed to diagnose and test the hard drive for errors, similar to a doctor's physical for a hard drive. It doesn't restore drives as much as simply test them.
If you are having hard drive issues, and are looking to recover data, I would recommend reading an article by Kyle Rankin on Linux Journal called "Hack and / - When Disaster Strikes: Hard Drive Crashes" :
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10360
There are a variety of projects that are designed around restoring lost or damaged files though, such as:
Ubuntu Rescue Remix : http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/
SystemRescueCD : http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
RIP (recovery is possible) Linux : http://www.tux.org/pub/people/...linux/rip/
Recovery can be a long and arduous process. I do not envy you, but hopefully these links will be useful.