Re: About USB hard drives and errors

On 20100410_162445, Paul E Condon wrote:
On 20100410_092044, Clive McBarton wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Paul E Condon wrote:>
dumpe2fs -b <device> is supposed to print the bad blocks that have
been marked on a device. When I run it, it prints nothing. I find it
hard to believe that a 500GB HD contains ZERO bad blocks.

Every HD that is even remotely close to being usable will always have
zero bad blocks when seen from outside the HD. All HDs have error
recognition and error correction and automatic replacement of faulty
sectors with spare ones. A HD will only show bad blocks after all of its
remapping area is used, at which point it is far beyond being usable.

In other words, scanning for bad blocks on a HD cannot work.

Thanks Clive. Your post has been invaluable in fixing some faulty thinking
on my part, and in provoking other useful posts. But I want more ...

The errors that I am experiencing are all similar. The first
indication of a problem is a message from the kernel (I think). An
example is:

kernel: [78454.939948] journal commit I/O error

This appears on all xterm windows on the affected machine. On the
xterm that is controlling a process that is using one of the USB
drives, there follows a long sequence of error messages about the
drive being read-only, which stops after a while. Or sometimes I stop
it by typing ^C on that xterm.

When this happens, all the USB drives (3 of them) disappear from
/dev/disks/by-label (they are all labeled by me). I have not
discovered any to make them re-appear, short of rebooting the
computer. After reboot, I run e2fsck on all of them, and always get a
longish delay on each while e2fsck commits (or whatever) the
journal. This can take a few seconds or up to half a minute. Then
I manually mount them using pmount, and all data upto the point
where the crash happened seems to be present.

I have installed smartmontools, but I think there is some
incompatibility between the installed version and the installed
docs. The README.Debian makes reference to editing some lines in the
config file that are not present in the default, package installed,
config file. There is (apparently) some incompatibility between using
the daemon and using smartctl. The problem host is running Lenny, but
the docs seem to be the same as on a different host that is running
Squeeze.

I would very much appreciate some help in understanding the docs.
What is a safe thing for a nubie to type as a first command to
smartctl?

I'm answering my own post in order to bring some closure on this issue.
If anyone has suggestions, please come forward. But here is where things
stand with me:

I got a little less timid and tried running smartctl even though I was
quite unsure of what to expect. It ran. Each of the three USB HD gave
somewhat different output, but none gave output that claimed there was
a working SMART on the drive. These drives are Western Digital (WD).
The WD web site mentions SMART and also uses the words Smart Drive to
mean something else that is a proprietary marketing thing, AFAICT. I
was unable to find a list of part #s for drives that support S.M.A.R.T.

I think I should be in the market for a better class of drives, but not
this weekend. Thanks for the help.

--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100411040606.GC10774@xxxxxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: eiolprs Monday 15th - OP (now spiller Fri 19 and Thurs 25.10
    ... would hope and expect OtherHalf to come with me, even though Offspring ... Matt, so presumably would have had a change of clothing with him. ... (But it won't stop her getting off with Paul!) ... she has piggoi in the front passenger seat as she drives to the laurels, ...
    (uk.media.radio.archers)
  • Re: Mapped drives will not reconnect at logon - definitive answer?
    ... Paul have you received anything on this through your email? ... > I map two network drives on the XP machines to two shared folders on the ... > my computer and I have to double click the icon to reconnect the drive. ... > AV software, scanner software, etc. then at least my countdown period ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)
  • Re: About USB hard drives and errors
    ... On Thursday 08 April 2010 04:44:33 pm Paul E Condon wrote: ... for sale in places like Best Buy and Costco. ... I used 'smartmontools' AFAIKT, lots of drives have errors, errors get re-mapped by ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Asus P5Q Deluxe ESATA port hard drive size limit.
    ... So Paul, they way I understand it is that if lets say I had an sata ... was using the cables that came with the board but bought some that were ... With the old tape drives of the 80's he also said "Back it up and cry", ... "SMART Attributes were included in some drafts of the ATA standard, ...
    (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus)
  • Re: USB Generic Volume designation
    ... "Paul B" wrote in message ... I've got a 6 in 1 USB card reader. ... computer up to only show the Smart Media slot and name it drive D: ... wouldn't have to keep selcting different drives until I found the one ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)