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Recently I had an error in an important include file for C++ in my Ubuntu Linux system. I detected it due to a compile error and run debsums to check it. Indeed there was a string changed probably due to a bit flip in the file system. Checking further revealed about 10 more errors across the whole system in binary files. I remember bit flips can happen but I am wondering how often this might happen and what the reasons of these changes are?

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Short answer: It's almost guaranteed to be a bad drive. Toss it... and toss it soon.

In a disk-drive, bit-flips should be highly rare. (or, rather, they should never happen within the life-expectancy of the disk.) The reasons for a "bit-flip" are fairly self-explanatory, but depending on the type of disk, can be more or less susceptible to each cause.

At best, without some expensive equipment, and some detailed diagnostics, we can only give a guess as to why something like that happened. Regardless of the cause, it should have tripped the "S.M.A.R.T." diagnostics of the disk. Almost every operation in a disk drive goes through multiple checksums, all of which would have triggered some sort of error.

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