Re: can use of smartctl prevent disk probs?
Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> Maurits van Rees wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 02:12:32PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
>>
>>> Since failures with /dev/hdc I have been paying attention to smartctl.
>>>
>>> It is a, how should one say it, interesting program that provides lots
>>> of data.
>>>
>>> But it is not clear to me how you can prevent disk failure other than
>>> buying a disk with 5 year warranty, or something.
>>
>>
>>
>> That also won't prevent disk failure. It will just get you your money
>> back or get you a new hard disk. If it fails your data is still lost.
>> A warranty is no replacement for a backup regime. But yes, I would
>> sooner trust and buy a hard disk with a warranty of five years than of
>> one year. :)
>>
>> Smartctl just gives you advance warning when your hard disk is at risk
>> of failure. When you receive such a signal then make a backup and get
>> ready to insert a new hard disk.
>>
>> I use logcheck so I get an hourly email about events on my system.
>> There are some messages from smartctl that I don't worry about, so I
>> let logcheck ignore them. Here are the relevant lines that I have in
>> /etc/logcheck/ignore.d.workstation/local. These probably don't work
>> well for your system, so adapt as you see fit.
>>
>> ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ smartd\[[0-9]+\]: Device: /dev/hdb,
>> SMART Usage Attribute: 3 Spin_Up_Time changed from
>> ([89][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}) to ([89][0-9]|1[0-9]{2})$
>> ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ smartd\[[0-9]+\]: Device: /dev/hdc,
>> SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from [0-9]{3}
>> to [0-9]{3}$
>>
>> These lines have been here for months, so for my system these messages
>> are no reason to run to the computer shop. ;) But I do make daily
>> backups of course.
>>
>
> That's helpful, thanks.
> I note some more other than "Spin Up Time":
> "Seek Time Performance" + "Run Out Cancel".
>
> Funny things is they are pre-fail on a disk that I now use and is an
> "old" maxtor (Power Cycle Ct = 704).
>
> But the disk that I don't trust any more is only 6 months old (Power
> Cycle Ct = 204) and doesn't have any of those except UDMA CRC Error
> Ct=92. It failed with I/O errors when I was running on it.
>
> Is there a good site to find out wat those names actually mean?
I'm going through similar pain with this:
Device: /dev/hda, Failed SMART usage Attribute: 9 Power_On_Seconds.
It's not one of the "usual" attributes that comes up. The drive hasn't
failed a self test yet, but it's very frustrating, trying to find out
what the significance of these attributes is.
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