hard drive - Is my HDD failing as SMART parameter (Reallocated Sector count) is very high(390K)

I have a 2 year old 500GB HGST 5400rpm laptop HDD. I started tracking its SMART parameters a while ago, and number of Reallocated sectors(in decimal) has increased from 65k in Nov,2015 to 393264 in May,2016.Refer to the link below to view the history of the this parameter.

History of Reallocated sectors

My HDD is working fine but I am really worried that it may one day unexpectedly fail due to increasing number of Reallocated sectors.Should I be worried?

SMART parameters screenshot

Answer

Short answer: Backup your data and replace the drive as soon as possible, it is failing

Long answer: Yes, you should be worried... The drive is failing, it may die as your reading this, or it could go for months or years, but it is failing. 393k sectors is very excessive and the fact it is increasing means the drive is continuing to degrade. Acronis has a knowledge base article explaining what it is, or from Wikipedia's S.M.A.R.T. entry page:

Reallocated Sector Count
Better: lower
Severity: Critical

Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks that sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping, and reallocated sectors are called "remaps". The raw value normally represents a count of the bad sectors that have been found and remapped. Thus, the higher the attribute value, the more sectors the drive has had to reallocate. This allows a drive with bad sectors to continue operation; however, a drive which has had any reallocations at all is significantly more likely to fail in the near future.[3] While primarily used as a metric of the life expectancy of the drive, this number also affects performance. As the count of reallocated sectors increases, the read/write speed tends to become worse because the drive head is forced to seek to the reserved area whenever a remap is accessed. If sequential access speed is critical, the remapped sectors can be manually marked as bad blocks in the file system in order to prevent their use.

Seeing this parameter at a near zero value is normal, provided it does not increase over time, because that is an indication of degrading hardware and potential imminent failure. Regardless of the results of any self-testing or other information, this drive should be replaced as soon as possible to prevent catastrophic data loss.

Personally, if this value in excess of ~20 (not 20k or 200k, but 20) or an increasing value, I implement backup and hardware replacement procedures as soon as possible.

A quick check of a few drives on some computers on our test bench indicate all have their values for Reallocated Sector Count are 0, except one laptop which shows a value of 8, but it's 2 year history indicates only one reallocation event about 15 months ago.

windows 7 - How do I add favorite/specific sites to the Firefox 3.6 jump list?

Using Windows 7 and Firefox 3.6: I have Firefox pinned to my taskbar, and would like to have some specific sites pinned to the icon's jump list. Is this possible, if so how do I do this?

Answer

From what I've read, the developers of a program have to implement jumplist features beyond the basics of opening the program and closing it. You might notice that Internet Explorer has the ability you're talking about.

I guess the team at Mozilla hasn't gotten around to that yet.

In the meantime, you can use Jumplist Extender to add your own things to a jumplist.

How can I copy a column from one sheet to another sheet based on title in Excel?

I have a datasheet that has many columns that may change positions. To make it easier to use I want to create a second sheet that keeps the columns in a specified order. I can count on the column titles remaining the same, so I want to copy columns based on their title, or rather the first cell in the column matches a string.

As an example three of the columns in sheet 1 are

id     name     due date

But in another instance of sheet 1 they may appear as

id     due date     name

I want my second sheet to specify that the first row is 'id', second is 'name', etc. I attempted to use hlookup, but only found it useful for filling a single cell, dragging the formula didn't carry too well for me. Any ideas on ways to perform this using functions in excel? I'd rather not use a macro unless absolutely necessary.

Answer

=HLOOKUP(A$1,Sheet1!$A:$C,ROW(),FALSE)

As you fill the formula down, the ROW() acts as an offset to look at the next column on your table.

security - Make Chrome automatically load insecure content for specific pages/websites

Is it possible to have Chrome load content for specific web pages?

I have this page that I go to all the time and I am tired of clicking on the shield each time(to load anyway). I don't want to have it load insecure content for all websites as it is not recommended.

This page: "This page has insecure content." from Google does not not answer my question as I want a solution that automatically loads insecure content only for specific pages.

windows 7 - ngen.exe is constantly using CPU

I recently installed Windows 7. This was a clean install (i.e. not an upgrade from another version of Windows), but I did install a bunch of other programs. All mainstream applications - nothing wacky.

Since then, my CPU usage has been constantly at around 50%.

Task Manager shows me that ngen.exe is the culprit. It's not a long-running task: I can see that it gets a new PID at least once a second, so I guess something is constantly triggering it.

It does it all the time, even when I have no applications running.

Has anyone else seen this? How do I find out what's causing this?

Answer

Following Isxek's advice, I used Process Explorer to see what's going on. I found this:

Processes that are ending are highlighted red; ones just starting are green. This shows that ngen.exe is constantly ending and being restarted. From the graph at the top you can see it runs for about one second each time.

As Jim B says, netfxupdate.exe is working its way through the .NET framework. Mine had been going for several weeks, so for some reason it looks like it had got stuck on something and wasn't making any progress.

Using regedit, I found the entry that starts netfxupdate.exe whenever I start up my PC:

It looks like it's stuck on the .NET 1.1 libraries for some reason. I'm a .NET developer and some of my code runs on .NET 1.1. It all seems to be working fine, so I removed this entry from the registry and rebooted my machine.

It's been a couple of days now with no problems (even when developing against .NET 1.1), so I'm happy with this solution.

linux - Where is Gtk+ default theme saved

I've created several customized Gtk+ themes, more or less following this. They are all created under ~/.themes/ folder, and they are all working fine.

However, my question is, how come the system know which one of the themes under ~/.themes/ is the current one that I'm using? I want to backup that file to save my configuration. I know it is not ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini. So what is it?

Answer

Your current theme is not stored in a configuration file per se. It is a setting managed with dconf, which you can learn more about at GNOME's documentation page on the subject.

The exact setting is /org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme for GNOME and Unity and /org/mate/desktop/interface/gtk-theme for MATE. You can use dconf-editor to look at settings like these. It will show you the current value and the system default value.

You can also use the dconf command-line tool. dconf read /org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme will show you the current value.

System themes are stored in /usr/share/themes/. This is the system-wide equivalent of your ~/.themes/ directory. The directory matching the name of the value of your dconf setting is your current gtk theme.

windows xp - Cloning process failing

I am a brand spankin new software and tech intern at an industrial company that uses antiquated technology. My second day and I am tasked with troubleshooting the failure of a cloning process.

The application hosting the process is called SelfImage version 1.2.1 build 92. The operating system software is Windows XP Embedded standard. I am attempting to use the SelfImage software to TAKE a "system state image file" (i.e. not a selfie-type image file) LOADED FROM the Standmount Embedded Automation Controller/ UNO-2174AUNO 2174A running my system, and TARGETED TO a SQFlash Industrial Grade 8GB drive, also connected to the system (Removable Disk F:).

After SelfImage finishes its cloning process, I go to my F: drive and it either gives me an error of "Disk in F is not formatted", OR there are files in there but I assume they are corrupted, since these actions describe the files: rightClick>Properties>FileType:FILE.

VERY INTERESTING DETAIL:The occurrence of these two outcomes is determined by whether or not the card written to is EJECTED and then REINSERTED between the time it is written to and the time I navigate to the F: drive in Windows Explorer.

At this point I initiate a complete reformatting (i.e. a wipe) of the SQFlash and start the process again, but this time with trying to clone a different image.

Up until 3 weeks ago (long before I started here, so I cannot be blamed-PHEW!) this cloning process worked for my company, for these images.

To elaborate: My company has a permanent copy of the machine program that is loaded on to the UNO and then we try to clone that file onto a different, blank card. Also, the age of the permanent copy does make a difference as to whether the cloning process works. (i.e. Images from a card dedicated to newer machine programs are clonable, while images from cards dedicated to older machine system programs are not clonable.

Any ideas?

THINGS I HAVE TRIED:

• Changing the UNO unit


• Uninstalling and reinstalling SelfImage