Tony, hadn't heard from you in a while...started to worry; thought you might have taken off to the Caribbean....er, ...wait. Uh, nevermind.
It sounds like you have some tangled data bits on your drive. That's not the technical term or necessarily an accurate metaphor of what has happened, but I will continue with the metaphor and abuse it for what it's worth.
Occasionally, when a hard drive writes data it will stumble and put it in the wrong place. Think of it as a long line in a lazarette. You take your time; coil it; stow it. When you need it it beautifully coiled a flows from your hand like a spider casting silk.
Now coil, stow, retrieve, and re-stow this coil a thousand times a second; and in vibration; wild seas; and toss in some extra gear into the lazarette.... The coil might need a bit of preening to a) use it; or b) recoil it in a smaller space so it's still handy and usable, but to make room for additional gear.
You want to do the latter. Unfortunately the coil of line you want to shove over to the side of the lazarette needs to be untangled first.
Generally this check is a minor operation. Now a days, with the advanced data management in the file systems if the tangled data is not too bad a simple tool will run through the file system and automagically fix any problems.
Navigatrix automagically does this every 30 boots. It's mostly transparent....just ever 30th boot takes a little bit longer as the system preens itself to prevent any disasters.
The easiest way for you to check (and fix, if needed) your hard drive is to boot up Navigatrix and open up the
Partition Editor (
Menu >System Tools >Partition Editor)
This what my hard drive looks like:
Attachment:
-sda-GParted_0.png [ 103.19 KiB | Viewed 12148 times ]
Yours will look similar...but different.
I'm multi-booting to three different Linux distributions sharing the same /home; the geek version of a ménage à trois. Being of pure(r) heart and sound(er) mind most likely you won't have as many segments in your diagram. They will be different colour and have different names....that's ok.
When you boot up Navigatrix is going to want to mount these files systems. It's always advisable to UN-mount a file system before you check it.
Attachment:
-sda-GParted_1.png [ 110.1 KiB | Viewed 12148 times ]
Just click on every segment (in turn), and unmount it. You can either click on the diagram, or the text.
Attachment:
-sda-GParted_2.png [ 108.83 KiB | Viewed 12148 times ]
When the drive is unmounted the
Check command is enabled. Check it.
Do this for every chunk of salami that's in the diagram. You might have 3+ separate partitions.
When you are done....
Apply all Operations.Attachment:
-sda-GParted_3.png [ 99.09 KiB | Viewed 12148 times ]
...that the lazy man's way of 'checking the filesystem'...well that the way I do it sometimes.
Always a consideration, but seldom a concern, is the stern warning. (It's a CYA Statment.)
Attachment:
Apply operations to device_001.png [ 20.74 KiB | Viewed 12147 times ]
Check out
http://navigatrix.net/nxdoc/03_installing_nx.html if you have any questions. If you run into an unanswered question or problem come back here.
