On Tuesday 08 of May 2012 04:45:51 cwillu wrote:
> On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 1:36 AM, Fajar A. Nugraha <l...@fajar.net> wrote:
> > On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Clemens Eisserer <linuxhi...@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> I have a quite unreliable SSD here which develops some bad blocks from
> >> time to time which result in read-errors.
> >> Once the block is written to again, its remapped internally and
> >> everything is fine again for that block.
> >> 
> >> Would it be possible to create 2 btrfs partitions on that drive and
> >> use it in RAID1 - with btrfs silently repairing read-errors when they
> >> occur?
> >> Would it require special settings, to not fallback to read-only mode
> >> when a read-error occurs?
> > 
> > The problem would be how the SSD (and linux) behaves when it
> > encounters bad blocks (not bad disks, which is easier).
> > 
> > If it does "oh, I can't read this block. I just return an error
> > immediately", then it's good.
> > 
> > However, in most situation, it would be like "hmmm, I can't read this
> > block, let me retry that again. What? still error? then lets retry it
> > again, and again.", which could take several minutes for a single bad
> > block. And during that time linux (the kernel) would do something like
> > "hey, the disk is not responding. Why don't we try some stuff? Let's
> > try resetting the link. If it doesn't work, try downgrading the link
> > speed".
> > 
> > In short, if you KNOW the SSD is already showing signs of bad blocks,
> > better just throw it away.
> 
> The excessive number of retries (basically, the kernel repeating the
> work the drive already attempted) is being addressed in the block
> layer.
> 
> "[PATCH] libata-eh don't waste time retrying media errors (v3)", I
> believe this is queued for 3.5

I just hope they don't remove retries completely, I've seen the second or 
third try return correct data on multiple disks from different vendors. 
(Which allowed me to use dd to write the data back to force relocation)

But yes, Linux is a bit too overzelous with regards to retries...

Regards,
-- 
Hubert Kario
QBS - Quality Business Software
02-656 Warszawa, ul. Ksawerów 30/85
tel. +48 (22) 646-61-51, 646-74-24
www.qbs.com.pl
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