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I have a relatively new dual boot laptop (a thinkpad t42p) with Linux
(CentOS 4.4) and XP. When I boot Linux, smartctl mails me a message
about 4 smart errors (and says the mail message won't be
repeated)--the message lists 4 sectors as unreadable. Now, as far as
I can tell, the error messages are all about errors that happened in
the past--they always have the same timestamp for when the read
occurred. I believe the errors are all pointing to a time when the
laptop battery died while the machine was running, because someone had
diconnected the charger cord. I have tried running smartctl to test
the drive to see if that would clear the log of these messages.
However, that has had no effect (and probably that means that isn't
the way to clear the log). It did report that the test ran
successfully and detected no problems.

So, I'm looking for advice as to how to determine whether the errors
represent a real problem that I urgently need to fix or not. I have a
backup of the disk in question, but I might do more, like order a new
disk, if I thought that failure was imminent.

Second, if the errors are really the result of a one-time event, how
can I clear them, so that I don't have a new mail message to root that
I have to read and delete each time I boot. The problem with such
messages is that they become the boy crying wolf and I will eventually
miss a message that I should attend to. (I boot this system on
average 4 times a day, because I carry it with me (to and from work)
and always power it off, before moving it and switch between Linux and
XP with regularity also. That adds up to a lot of spurious mail
messages.)

Thanks, for any suggestions.

Every hard drive manufacturer has downloadable, bootable diskette hard
drive diagnositic software at their websites. Determine your HD make and
model, download and test. You might be able to fix the smartctl errors
that way - not sure. These are non-destructive tests and some even make
repairs. Good luck.