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    E series: Disk read error. ctrl+alt+del to restart

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by hmkim, Oct 3, 2010.

  1. hmkim

    hmkim Notebook Enthusiast

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    My Vaio E that I bought in 2 months ago didn't wake up from hibernation.
    After that, when I boot, it shows the "disk read error" message. I don't have a Windows 7 rescue disk, nor the Vaio came with a rescue disk. What can be done to check whether the HD simply died or the boot file is corrupted?
     
    hmkim, Oct 3, 2010
    #1
  2. arth1

    arth1 a҉r҉t҉h

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    Since nothing ever writes to "the boot file" (in reality, boot sector plus multiple files) during normal operations, you can safely assume that the drive is dying. Even if you should manage to map out the bad blocks and reinstall the boot sector and/or files, the drive is likely to go belly up.

    Use a program that can read the S.M.A.R.T. data to check what the drive says. Boot a Linux LiveCD (any distro should do) and call "smartctl".
    Typical usage:

    smartctl -t short /dev/sda
    (wait until the time when it says it will complete, plus a little bit longer to be on the safe side)
    smartctl --all /dev/sda

    This should tell you whether the drive has problems, which is quite likely.
     
    arth1, Oct 4, 2010
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