Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
In message 44my2n45zd@be-well.ilk.org, Lowell Gilbert freebsd-questions-lo...@be-well.ilk.org wrote: Ronald F. Guilmette r...@tristatelogic.com writes: Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC ,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 This is *not* necessarily a big deal, despite what your other response told you. Errors on reads do not mean that your drive's bad-sector table is full; only errors on write indicate that. If you can try manufacturer's drive diagnostics, do that. If you can't, then it's harder to fix things up, but not impossible; write back if you really can't use a low-level diag. Well, OK, so I ran the long test in Seagate Seatools. Result: It noticed exactly and only _one_ bad sector, which I of course told it to repair/remap. The kicker: The specific bad secror was somewhat near to the one that was indicated in the FreeBSD /var/log/messages errors, _however_ it was most definitely a different LBA sector #. So at that point I was kinda worried, cuz now I was looking at two bad sectors. Still, I didn't really want to have to RMA a drive that's less than one year old, so I used dd and copied /dev/zero to the whole drive. Then I used dd again to copy the wole drive to /dev/null. No errors at all in either case. Then I ran the Seatools long diagnostic again. Result: Zero errors. So I decided to keep the drive. Yes, there's some bad sectors, but I think they are all locked out now. I'm hoping this isn't a mistake. Only time will tell. Regards, rfg ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
In message 20091116182358.ga95...@slackbox.xs4all.nl, Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 04:06:55PM -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: =20 In one of my systems, I've got a Seagate SATA 500GB drive (ST3500320AS) which is actually not very old... purchased 12/11/2008. snip same single block. Here's the relevant lines from /var/log/messages: =20 Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=3D51READ= Y,DSC,ERROR error=3D40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 Nov 15 15:24:43 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=3D51READ= Y,DSC,ERROR error=3D40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 Nov 15 15:24:46 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=3D51READ= Y,DSC,ERROR error=3D40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 =20 ... Install the smartmontools port, and check the drive with 'smartctl -a /dev/ad4'. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, RMA it immediately, as it is about to fail. If see other errors reported, RMA it. OK, I went to do this, but first (I figured) I had to umount the drive. So I did that first and... Yikes! Just umount'ing it caused an error, allegedly in LBA sector 0! Yikes! Nov 18 19:04:06 coredump kernel: ad4: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0 Ignoring that for the moment, I went ahead and ran smartctl -a /dev/ad4 as you suggested. Results are attached below. I have no idea how to read this stuff, and would be happy to be tutored a bit on this. But anyway, because of the *new* error I just got (LBA=0) I have decided now that I *will* RMA the drive back after all. (Getting an error reading logical sector zero is just too scary for me!) Note that the original problematic sector was 256230591, however the one that Seatools had found to be bad (and had allegedly re-mapped for me) was 256230614... a number which also appears several times in the report below. I don't really understand what I'm looking at here. If in fact Seatools did actually repair (re-map?) a sector for me, then shouldn't Reallocated_Sector_Ct have some positive non-zero value? == smartctl version 5.38 [amd64-portbld-freebsd7.2] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Device Model: ST3500320AS Serial Number:5QM2H3V3 Firmware Version: SD15 User Capacity:500,107,862,016 bytes Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 8 ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 4 Local Time is:Wed Nov 18 19:12:56 2009 PST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. Total time to complete Offline data collection: ( 650) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities:(0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities:(0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability:(0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time:( 1) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time:( 119) minutes. Conveyance self-test routine recommended polling time:( 2) minutes. SCT capabilities: (0x103b) SCT Status supported. SCT Feature Control supported. SCT Data Table supported. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 107 100 006Pre-fail Always
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 285, Issue 3, Message 28 On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:16:27 +0100 Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 09:43:31PM +, Bruce Cran wrote: On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:23:58 +0100 Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: Install the smartmontools port, and check the drive with 'smartctl -a /dev/ad4'. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, RMA it immediately, as it is about to fail. If see other errors reported, RMA it. (S)ATA disk have spare sectors available. If a sector fails, it is replaced by one of the spares by the firmware. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, it means that the drive has run out of spares. This is bad news. Surely it's the other way around - if you see a value of zero in the value column the drive has run out of spare sectors and it's time to RMA the drive? I was talking about the _RAW_VALUE column. There seems to be some differences in interpretation between vendors as to what the VALUE column means. Most of the advice I've seen over the years says to look at the RAW_VALUE. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. as well. Mmm, but as that article - which really only mentions the 'normalised' values smartctl presents in passing - points out, there can be quite a lot of variation between different manufacturers as to what RAW_VALUE actually represents for various attributes, whereas the usage of VALUE WORST THRESH values is much more consistent, and what the vendor is actually presenting as the SMART good/fair/fail analysis to the world. For instance, I've got two Fujitsu 5400rpm 2.5 drives in two laptops, one MHV2040AH with near 19,000 hours on it, and a much newer MHV2120AH, 40 and 120GB respectively. Nice quiet low-power laptop drives, fwiw. Both show as (more recently) being in the smartctl database, and both show _exactly_ the same values for this one: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 024Pre-fail Always - 8589934592000 Now if that were a number of 512-byte sectors, it'd be 4096000 GB! :) but both drives are 100% ok, as the VALUE / WORST figures show. From what I've seen the 'raw' column appears to count the number of sectors the drive has remapped using the spares buffer. If it gets into the hundreds it's probably time to think about RMA'ing the drive Yes, the raw value is the number of sectors allocated from the spares. I originally thought it was the number of reallocations _beyond_ the spares. That's a misunderstanding on my part. Again, may depend on the drive make/model. With the same make/model you can of course usefully compare raw values, but be careful about drawing inferences for different drives, or you may be RMA'ing needlessly .. Nevertheless this attribute (along with several) is marked on the Wikipedia page for smart as a Potential indicator of imminent electromechanical failure. You can find the same attributes marked as critical when perusing mailing list archives. For me, my data is worth much more than the harddisk it is on. Some of it is literally irreplacable. So my policy is to go look for a replacement harddisk as soon as the RAW_VALUEs of any of these critical indicators start going up from zero. And store any data at least on two harddisks, whether in a mirror or in a cron+rsync setup. That'd be the case for the disks you tend to use. I was first going to reply to Bruce's message when I spotted yours, but you've dropped the last bit of his quote, that I was about to wholeheartedly agree with :) : If it gets into the hundreds it's probably time to think about RMA'ing : the drive - if you trust that the 'raw' column is reporting what you : think it is (you should really only base your decision on the value, : worst and threshold columns). cheers, Ian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
Hi-- On Nov 17, 2009, at 7:51 AM, Ian Smith wrote: [ ... ] For instance, I've got two Fujitsu 5400rpm 2.5 drives in two laptops, one MHV2040AH with near 19,000 hours on it, and a much newer MHV2120AH, 40 and 120GB respectively. Nice quiet low-power laptop drives, fwiw. Both show as (more recently) being in the smartctl database, and both show _exactly_ the same values for this one: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 024Pre-fail Always - 8589934592000 Now if that were a number of 512-byte sectors, it'd be 4096000 GB! :) but both drives are 100% ok, as the VALUE / WORST figures show. I wouldn't conclude that the drives were 100% OK from that line, although they *might* be; I'd conclude that the drives aren't implementing this SMART field correctly in their firmware. Are you using the latest version of smartctl-- updates to that can sometimes better interpret vendor-specific odditities. Regards, -- -Chuck ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
On Tue, 17 Nov 2009, Chuck Swiger wrote: On Nov 17, 2009, at 7:51 AM, Ian Smith wrote: [ ... ] For instance, I've got two Fujitsu 5400rpm 2.5 drives in two laptops, one MHV2040AH with near 19,000 hours on it, and a much newer MHV2120AH, 40 and 120GB respectively. Nice quiet low-power laptop drives, fwiw. Both show as (more recently) being in the smartctl database, and both show _exactly_ the same values for this one: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 024Pre-fail Always - 8589934592000 Now if that were a number of 512-byte sectors, it'd be 4096000 GB! :) but both drives are 100% ok, as the VALUE / WORST figures show. I wouldn't conclude that the drives were 100% OK from that line, although they *might* be; I'd conclude that the drives aren't implementing this SMART field correctly in their firmware. Are you using the latest version of smartctl-- updates to that can sometimes better interpret vendor-specific odditities. Hi Chuck, Well, _Fujitsu_ reckon they're 100% OK on THAT attribute (100 100 024), which is the point I (and Bruce, I think) was trying to make, along with perhaps a gentle don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia :) The smartctl program is not definitive for RAW_VALUE attributes; the manufacturer is. Some raw values are manufacturer-specific, like this one, and the smartctl author likely concentrates on the lowest hanging fruit; its database is already huge. This one is larger than 32 bits, possibly a mis-byte-ordered 48- or 64-bit value? If the two drives showed different values I'd pursue trying different byte orderings. And no, this certainly wouldn't be the latest smartctl; to compare the 120G drive I installed (last night) smartmontools on a 7.0 system that's soon to be upgraded to 7-STABLE, so using a 7.0-RELEASE ports tree with smartctl 5.37, which shows '009 Power_On_Seconds' as the only odd value for this make/model, from smartctl -P show /dev/ad0 cheers, Ian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 04:06:55PM -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: In one of my systems, I've got a Seagate SATA 500GB drive (ST3500320AS) which is actually not very old... purchased 12/11/2008. snip same single block. Here's the relevant lines from /var/log/messages: Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 Nov 15 15:24:43 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 Nov 15 15:24:46 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 (Don't be confused... The name of the host system here is coredump... my lame attempt at humor.) Install the smartmontools port, and check the drive with 'smartctl -a /dev/ad4'. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, RMA it immediately, as it is about to fail. If see other errors reported, RMA it. (S)ATA disk have spare sectors available. If a sector fails, it is replaced by one of the spares by the firmware. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, it means that the drive has run out of spares. This is bad news. P.S. If I _do_ end up RMA'ing the thing back, do I need to worry about scrubing the drive squeaky clean first... you know... using one of these multiple write-over progs (like `wipe') if I am paranoid... as I am... about the possibility of old credit card numbers lying around in unallocated sectors on the drive? (The drive is empty _now_, but earlier it was in serious/heavy use.) No. Just fill it with zeros. There was a paper presented at Usenix 1996 that you could potentially read erased data from the sidebands. But that was looking at disks make in the early nineties using MFM and RLL encoding. The encoding on todays disks is very different. The author of te original paper thinks it is almost impossible to recover overwritten data on a current harddisk. To quote from the epilogue from [http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html]: Any modern drive will most likely be a hopeless task, what with ultra-high densities and use of perpendicular recording... I guess what I'm asking is: Do Segate and the other manufacturers care enough about their customer's privacy to securely wipe old drives/platters that come in to them for RMA? Or do I need to worry 'bout that for my own self? I would always wipe them myself. You cannot guarantee that the manufacturer will do it. But I was under the impression that the information on a platter can only be properly read by the same arm/head it was written with. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpOS9tMIB7pl.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:23:58 +0100 Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: Install the smartmontools port, and check the drive with 'smartctl -a /dev/ad4'. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, RMA it immediately, as it is about to fail. If see other errors reported, RMA it. (S)ATA disk have spare sectors available. If a sector fails, it is replaced by one of the spares by the firmware. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, it means that the drive has run out of spares. This is bad news. Surely it's the other way around - if you see a value of zero in the value column the drive has run out of spare sectors and it's time to RMA the drive? From what I've seen the 'raw' column appears to count the number of sectors the drive has remapped using the spares buffer. If it gets into the hundreds it's probably time to think about RMA'ing the drive - if you trust that the 'raw' column is reporting what you think it is (you should really only base your decision on the value, worst and threshold columns). -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 09:43:31PM +, Bruce Cran wrote: On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:23:58 +0100 Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: Install the smartmontools port, and check the drive with 'smartctl -a /dev/ad4'. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, RMA it immediately, as it is about to fail. If see other errors reported, RMA it. (S)ATA disk have spare sectors available. If a sector fails, it is replaced by one of the spares by the firmware. If you see a non-zero Reallocated_Sector_Ct, it means that the drive has run out of spares. This is bad news. Surely it's the other way around - if you see a value of zero in the value column the drive has run out of spare sectors and it's time to RMA the drive? I was talking about the _RAW_VALUE column. There seems to be some differences in interpretation between vendors as to what the VALUE column means. Most of the advice I've seen over the years says to look at the RAW_VALUE. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. as well. From what I've seen the 'raw' column appears to count the number of sectors the drive has remapped using the spares buffer. If it gets into the hundreds it's probably time to think about RMA'ing the drive Yes, the raw value is the number of sectors allocated from the spares. I originally thought it was the number of reallocations _beyond_ the spares. That's a misunderstanding on my part. Nevertheless this attribute (along with several) is marked on the Wikipedia page for smart as a Potential indicator of imminent electromechanical failure. You can find the same attributes marked as critical when perusing mailing list archives. For me, my data is worth much more than the harddisk it is on. Some of it is literally irreplacable. So my policy is to go look for a replacement harddisk as soon as the RAW_VALUEs of any of these critical indicators start going up from zero. And store any data at least on two harddisks, whether in a mirror or in a cron+rsync setup. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpnAt8LPu3hn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
In one of my systems, I've got a Seagate SATA 500GB drive (ST3500320AS) which is actually not very old... purchased 12/11/2008. It's never given me any problems, but just a few minutes ago, while compiling a small C program, I got a set of three irrecoverable errors in quick succession... apparently all read errors from the same single block. Here's the relevant lines from /var/log/messages: Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 Nov 15 15:24:43 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 Nov 15 15:24:46 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 (Don't be confused... The name of the host system here is coredump... my lame attempt at humor.) So anyway, this is one of those Seagate drives with 5-year warranty. (I only buy the 5-year ones these days... don't trust anything less.) This situation happened at a (relatively) opportune moment. I have zip, nada, nothing on the drive that needs to be either backed up or relocated to another drive. This drive is essentially blank at the moment. So, the question is, should I: 1) RMA the drive back to Seagate? 2) Somehow try to lock-out the bad sector(s)? (If so, how?) 3) Other? If it was failing all over the place (and on multiple blocks), then yea, sure, I'd RMA it back to Seagate in a heartbeat. But heck! It's only one sector. And what's one sector between friends? Before posting this, I googled around a bit for the crrent Accepted Wisdom regarding such sitiations. Most seems to say that bad blocks (even one?) are an early warning of impending doom (for the drive), and suggest trashing or RMA'ing the drive. I just sorta wanted to know if folks here would agree or disagree with that. One thing concerns me about the thought of RMA'ing the drive back... The last time I RMA'd a drive (years ago a different brand) I got back as a replacement a ``refurb'' drive. Hummm. If I RMA this drive, it is possible that Seagate would replace it with a refurb whose remaining life may perhaps prove to be even less than the drive I am RMA'ing? Do Seagate RMA drive replacements come with fresh platters? Regards, rfg P.S. If I _do_ end up RMA'ing the thing back, do I need to worry about scrubing the drive squeaky clean first... you know... using one of these multiple write-over progs (like `wipe') if I am paranoid... as I am... about the possibility of old credit card numbers lying around in unallocated sectors on the drive? (The drive is empty _now_, but earlier it was in serious/heavy use.) I guess what I'm asking is: Do Segate and the other manufacturers care enough about their customer's privacy to securely wipe old drives/platters that come in to them for RMA? Or do I need to worry 'bout that for my own self? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:06:55 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette r...@tristatelogic.com wrote: So, the question is, should I: 1) RMA the drive back to Seagate? Yes. 2) Somehow try to lock-out the bad sector(s)? (If so, how?) [...] If it was failing all over the place (and on multiple blocks), then yea, sure, I'd RMA it back to Seagate in a heartbeat. But heck! It's only one sector. And what's one sector between friends? If there's already error messaging to the OS, then the drive's firmware has noticed that it can't compensate errors anymore. This means: Probably there isn't only one bad sector - there are lots of them. (The drive uses spare sectors to move data to them when a sector in use gets bad.) Backup all your important data and get rid of this drive, this will save you possibly upcoming trouble. Before posting this, I googled around a bit for the crrent Accepted Wisdom regarding such sitiations. Most seems to say that bad blocks (even one?) are an early warning of impending doom (for the drive), and suggest trashing or RMA'ing the drive. I just sorta wanted to know if folks here would agree or disagree with that. From my knowledge and experience, this is correct. One thing concerns me about the thought of RMA'ing the drive back... The last time I RMA'd a drive (years ago a different brand) I got back as a replacement a ``refurb'' drive. Hummm. If I RMA this drive, it is possible that Seagate would replace it with a refurb whose remaining life may perhaps prove to be even less than the drive I am RMA'ing? Do Seagate RMA drive replacements come with fresh platters? There's always smartctl (from port smartmontools) to do some checking on the drive you get back. P.S. If I _do_ end up RMA'ing the thing back, do I need to worry about scrubing the drive squeaky clean first... you know... using one of these multiple write-over progs (like `wipe') if I am paranoid... as I am... about the possibility of old credit card numbers lying around in unallocated sectors on the drive? (The drive is empty _now_, but earlier it was in serious/heavy use.) You could first mount all the partitions (from a live CD or DVD) of the disk and then to the magical remark read-file command (rm -rf /), and afterwards running dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1m for a while. Check that ad0 really is the drive you want to clean, or else. :-) I guess what I'm asking is: Do Segate and the other manufacturers care enough about their customer's privacy to securely wipe old drives/platters that come in to them for RMA? Or do I need to worry 'bout that for my own self? I've got no experience with how Seagate treats his customers. To be sure, at least clean your disk a bit as mentioned above, because that's for YOUR security. If Seagate is intelligent enough to send you a new drive back with a FAT or NTFS file system on it... you'll delete it anyway. Help the manufacturer - help you. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
Ronald F. Guilmette r...@tristatelogic.com writes: Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 This is *not* necessarily a big deal, despite what your other response told you. Errors on reads do not mean that your drive's bad-sector table is full; only errors on write indicate that. If you can try manufacturer's drive diagnostics, do that. If you can't, then it's harder to fix things up, but not impossible; write back if you really can't use a low-level diag. -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
Lowell Gilbert wrote: Ronald F. Guilmette r...@tristatelogic.com writes: Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 This is *not* necessarily a big deal, despite what your other response told you. Errors on reads do not mean that your drive's bad-sector table is full; only errors on write indicate that. If you can try manufacturer's drive diagnostics, do that. If you can't, then it's harder to fix things up, but not impossible; write back if you really can't use a low-level diag. Yes -- this is correct. It's possible for a disk to be unable to read a sector, but rewriting the sector would either succeed and leave the sector fully working again, or cause it to be remapped in which case the disk will subsequently perform perfectly well[*]. Beyond running the manufacturers diagnostics, as the OP has said he has nothing particularly valuable on the drive, it might be worth running a few passes of dban or similar on the disk --- this will overwrite every part of the platter and should make it abundantly clear if there is a real and persistent problem. If you can't afford to scrub the disk, then just keep it under observation: if the problems recur within a few weeks then yes, definitely RMA that drive. Cheers, Matthew [*] If the error messages have disappeared since, then this has probably already happened. -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate Kent, CT11 9PW signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
Lowell Gilbert wrote: Ronald F. Guilmette r...@tristatelogic.com writes: Nov 15 15:24:17 coredump kernel: ad4: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51READY,DSC,ERROR error=40UNCORRECTABLE LBA=256230591 This is *not* necessarily a big deal, despite what your other response told you. Errors on reads do not mean that your drive's bad-sector table is full; only errors on write indicate that. If you can try manufacturer's drive diagnostics, do that. If you can't, then it's harder to fix things up, but not impossible; write back if you really can't use a low-level diag. Yes -- this is correct. It's possible for a disk to be unable to read a sector, but rewriting the sector would either succeed and leave the sector fully working again, or cause it to be remapped in which case the disk will subsequently perform perfectly well[*]. Beyond running the manufacturers diagnostics, as the OP has said he has nothing particularly valuable on the drive, it might be worth running a few passes of dban or similar on the disk --- this will overwrite every part of the platter and should make it abundantly clear if there is a real and persistent problem. If you can't afford to scrub the disk, then just keep it under observation: if the problems recur within a few weeks then yes, definitely RMA that drive. Cheers, Matthew [*] If the error messages have disappeared since, then this has probably already happened. -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate Kent, CT11 9PW signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
