Re: SATA disk errors
Thanks for your time Stan.
On 31/12/11 23:04, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
On 12/31/2011 12:21 PM, Tony van der Hoff wrote:
/dev/sda
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 243530983
7 Seek_Error_Rate 18363743
/dev/sdb
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 138763088
7 Seek_Error_Rate 1374378
Interestingly, SMART says these two drives have been in service only 2.6
months:
9 Power_On_Hours 1893
Indeed, the whole ststem is less than 6 months old, and hasn't been
switched on for 3 of them! Although the second drive was fitted, and
powered up, it hasn't been pressed into use until recently. The failure
rates don't really stack up with that.
This indicates both drives are failing and should be replaced ASAP. Hi
Seek_Error_Rate typically means the voice coil actuator assy is worn
out. The arm has holes with sleeve bearings pressed into them which
ride on a post screwed into the drive frame. The bearings wear over
time, causing the actuator to wobble slightly on the post, eventually to
a point past which the drive firmware can no longer compensate for the
wobble. This causes the head to be misplaced over the platter. When
this occurs you will see multiple head seek movements per read/write
command. Thus, you should be seeing performance degradation as a
result. Are you?
It's difficult to believe drives less than 3 months old have worn out
spindle bearings. That would indicate the vendor supplied bearings were
not mic'd properly before installation, meaning horrible QC. Seagate
isn't known for horrible QC.
No, I chose Seagate drives because of their reputation for reliability.
As you say, it's hard to believe ANY disk will fail after such a short
time, let alone two. If it is a systematic QC problem, then I would
expect to see problem reports all over Google; in fact I'm seeing none.
I'm not noticing any significant performance problems; in fact I am very
pleased with the performance of this machine.
Is your system in a high vibration environment? Are these drives
mounted securely in the chassis? If the cause of the problem is not bad
QC at Seagate, it's likely high external vibration being transferred
into the drive chassis.
No, no vibration; disks are securely mounted; the drive cage in this box
sits on on AV mounts, to minimise acoustic noise.
Either way, these two drives are toast and need replacement. If the
problem in the latter, make sure you properly, securely, mount the
replacement drives.
Thanks very much for your suggestions.
--
Tony van der Hoff | mailto:tony@vanderhoff.org
Buckinghamshire, England |
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