Is “Disk failure is imminent” causing the errors I am experiencing?

Question

I am getting SMART Status 184 end to end error, and "Disk failure is imminent", suggesting I need to get a new hard drive, and I will do.

But now I am also getting error messages such as when running vim:

vim: error while loading shared libraries: libgnomeui-2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

or apt-get update:

apt-get: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libapt-pkg.so.4.11: invalid ELF header

Just wondering if the imminent disk failure is causing these problems?

System is Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot xp 64bit

Disk failures sometimes cause data corruption, but more often they result in unreadable data. Do a memory test; that can trigger data corruption that goes undetected for a while.
SMART is usually incorrect by omission: i.e. failing to warn you when a disk is about to die. When SMART warns you like this, feel lucky, and assume failure is indeed imminent.

Rory Alsop · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-22 20:12:18Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Disk failure can cause all sorts of problems, as files, binaries, libraries etc may become corrupted so the safest assumption is yes.

So ensure you have all data backed up, and get a new disk now.

answered Feb 22 '12 at 20:12

Rory Alsop
1,525415

Renan · Answer 2 · 2012-02-22 20:13:16Z

up vote 1 down vote

It's likely: libraries fail to load or get corrupted because of disk failures.

answered Feb 22 '12 at 20:13

Renan
8,30441943

2 Answers