Re: SMART disk errors

From: Juhan Leemet (juhan_at_logicognosis.com)
Date: 10/23/04 

Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:23:00 -0200

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:45:27 +0000, Haines Brown wrote:
> "Trevor Hemsley" <Trevor-Hemsley@mytrousers.dsl.pipex.com> writes:
>> On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:20:44 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware, Haines Brown
>> <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I've a scsi hard disk that for some time I've mistrusted. I'm now
>> > trying to pin down what, if anything, might be wrong with it.
>>
>> Try running scsiinfo against it, more particularly
>>
>> scsiinfo -d /dev/sda
>>
>> and see if that lists anything in the grown sectors list (it's OK to
>> have stuff in the manufacturers table).
>
> I ran scsiinfo as you suggest and it concluded that:
>
> 0 entries in grown table.
> Format is: bytes from index [Cyl:Head:Off]
> Offset -1 marks whole track as bad.
>
> So in principle there's nothing in the grown sesctors list, however,
> I'm not sure. The utility ran:
>
> Data from Defect Lists
> ----------------------
> 3380 entries in manufacturer table
> ...
>
> Then it lists all these entries, and I didn't see any Offset -1 marks
> that indicate a track as being bad, however, this long table ends:
>
> 1606:3:1024 1606:3:0
> [truncated]
>
> The truncation worries me.

You should not normally see any Offset -1 marks, IMO, because disk defects
are usually small, only 1 or 2 sectors, and hence listed separately, and
not the whole track. I don't think I've ever seen a track marked all bad,
but I don't use 100s of disks (well maybe close to 100 over the years?)

3380 is a large number to be listed, tho I think most (?) tables are about
8K entries in size? I have had some disks accumulate errors and fill up a
table. ISTR also having some disks with 1000s of manufacturer errors. The
2 SCSI 18GB disks on this Dell have 207 and 147 manufacturer table errors.
I don't know who/what is truncating your display. I suspect the program?

The grown table is the important one, IMO. If you have 0s in there, that
means that your drive has not changed from what was originally shipped. I
would say if you accumulate a few grown bad sectors, that's not bad. One
of my drives which failed progressively (accelerating) accumulated more,
and more, until the grown defects table was filled up. Bad drive.

BTW, it might be an idea to look at the drive temperature now and then,
from the smartctl display. I think I managed to cook an IDE Maxtor in
another machine. The fan cover/vent got all clogged up with dust bunnies,
and I started to see errors. By that time it seems to have been too late
(bad sector 0 = bummer). A warning on drive temp might have saved it? 

-- 
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.

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