A small old Linux test PC starting generating hard disk sector error messages in its log files last week Thursday. So, I shut it down and booted it with a SpinRite CD (we have a site license, thank goodness). When the first two red U’s indicating uncorrectable errors appeared, I wasn’t surprised to see it estimate an additional 13 hours to scan the remainder of the disk. But, I was not prepared to see this when I came into the office Monday morning (more than 3 days later). 
As you can see, it was only 56% of the way done (or so its current estimate reported) and lots of red U symbols indicating lots of hard disk problems. Fortunately, this is just a test system and nothing needs to be truly recovered. So, this is mostly an academic exercise since I’ve never seen this many problems on a disk. Actually, this is the first time I’ve seen SpinRite report problems at all. My gut estimate is that I will need to wait a few more days before I can reboot the system back into Linux and see exactly what is missing and how usable the system is in this semi-recovered state. The entire scanning and repair process may take a week. So, this is truly an exercise in patience. BTW, the PC is a Pentium III (remember those). Despite their age, they make great little Linux boxes to build custom gateways and other semi-appliance type functions.