SMART can be used for a couple different things - one is just reading the health values reported by the drive, another is for instructing the drive to run tests of itself and then reporting the results. if you haven’t already, I’d recommend having it run the “long” self-test as that inspects the entire drive. it will often prompt the drive to report problems that it may not have noticed otherwise.
a related thing to keep an eye on, especially with an old netbook like that, is the power & data connectors to the drive. buildup of dust, or corrosion on the contacts, or something like that, could cause symptoms that look like a drive failure, even if the drive itself is perfectly healthy.
The problems I described eventually happened again after 3 days or so. I got pissed, so I decided to RMA the drive and ship it to Denmark where the store I bought it from has its HQ. As a temporary solution I formatted the laptop’s original HDD, put it back and installed Ubuntu Server. A bit of setting up and now things work. In the meantime I won’t be running NextCloud though, as the drive’s only 250 GB.
SMART can be used for a couple different things - one is just reading the health values reported by the drive, another is for instructing the drive to run tests of itself and then reporting the results. if you haven’t already, I’d recommend having it run the “long” self-test as that inspects the entire drive. it will often prompt the drive to report problems that it may not have noticed otherwise.
a related thing to keep an eye on, especially with an old netbook like that, is the power & data connectors to the drive. buildup of dust, or corrosion on the contacts, or something like that, could cause symptoms that look like a drive failure, even if the drive itself is perfectly healthy.
The problems I described eventually happened again after 3 days or so. I got pissed, so I decided to RMA the drive and ship it to Denmark where the store I bought it from has its HQ. As a temporary solution I formatted the laptop’s original HDD, put it back and installed Ubuntu Server. A bit of setting up and now things work. In the meantime I won’t be running NextCloud though, as the drive’s only 250 GB.