Hmmm... or does it mean I need to completely reformat or fsck this disk throughly to ensure that it is really going bad? I am using FC4 so I wonder if there is another reason...
I will have to chek this out.
Dan
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com]On Behalf Of Benjamin Franz Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 7:10 PM To: For users of Fedora Core releases Subject: Re: Smartd message: What does it mean?
On Fri, 28 Oct 2005, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
Hi Folks,
Trying to understand this message, any ideas?
This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:
host name: xxx.xxx.com DNS domain: xxx.com NIS domain: (none)
The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/hdb, 14 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).
It means you have 14 bad sectors on your /dev/hdb hard drive. It also means it is time to buy another drive and copy your data over to it.
Hi
I have 2 machines with such messages and hdd's just running fine for 2+ years. If ext2/3 fs is not marking such sectors as "bad, i dont use it anymore" then its about time that such things are going to be developed right? I do not want to replace a HDD if just 1 sector is marked bad at smartd. The smartd message is only showing up after a reboot overhere.
Danny.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel B. Thurman" dant@cdkkt.com To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" fedora-list@redhat.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 4:18 AM Subject: RE: Smartd message: What does it mean?
Hmmm... or does it mean I need to completely reformat or fsck this disk throughly to ensure that it is really going bad? I am using FC4 so I wonder if there is another reason...
I will have to chek this out.
Dan
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com]On Behalf Of Benjamin Franz Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 7:10 PM To: For users of Fedora Core releases Subject: Re: Smartd message: What does it mean?
On Fri, 28 Oct 2005, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
Hi Folks,
Trying to understand this message, any ideas?
This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:
host name: xxx.xxx.com DNS domain: xxx.com NIS domain: (none)
The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/hdb, 14 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).
It means you have 14 bad sectors on your /dev/hdb hard drive. It also means it is time to buy another drive and copy your data over to it.
On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 04:26 +0200, Danny Terweij - Net Tuning | Net wrote:
Hi
I have 2 machines with such messages and hdd's just running fine for 2+ years. If ext2/3 fs is not marking such sectors as "bad, i dont use it anymore" then its about time that such things are going to be developed right? I do not want to replace a HDD if just 1 sector is marked bad at smartd. The smartd message is only showing up after a reboot overhere.
---- don't know how accessible it is to unmount (you may need to boot CD in 'linux rescue' mode because you can't do this on a mounted hd) but
e2fsck -c /dev/hdx#
option can locate the bad blocks for you (obviously substitute for x# appropriately).
Generally, when I get a hard drive with some bad blocks, it seems to indicate that things are going downhill and the drive isn't trustworthy and given the price of hard drives, it's almost always easier/less painful to copy it, replace it and the bonus is, you get high tech paperweight.
Craig
From: "Craig White" craigwhite@azapple.com
I have 2 machines with such messages and hdd's just running fine for 2+ years. If ext2/3 fs is not marking such sectors as "bad, i dont use it
Generally, when I get a hard drive with some bad blocks, it seems to indicate that things are going downhill and the drive isn't trustworthy and given the price of hard drives, it's almost always easier/less painful to copy it, replace it and the bonus is, you get high tech paperweight.
If the bad sectors are not growing and hdd is heavy used at read/write and just 1 sector is bad and it is still running 2+ years... i dont buy a new hdd :) I only know that HDD's the last years (since 1Gb drives where invented) are absolutly not reaching the lifetime of the first old "20Mb-540Mb HDD's"). On a old play machine i still use HDD's in the age of at least 15 years old. At present days if i buy a new hdd then it will die within 2 years in general. Always wondered why :)
In short, high tech paperweight is not always a sollution in the financial picture :P
Anyway, thats another story :P
On Friday 28 October 2005 22:26, Danny Terweij - Net Tuning | Net wrote:
Hi
I have 2 machines with such messages and hdd's just running fine for 2+ years. If ext2/3 fs is not marking such sectors as "bad, i dont use it anymore" then its about time that such things are going to be developed right? I do not want to replace a HDD if just 1 sector is marked bad at smartd. The smartd message is only showing up after a reboot overhere.
Danny. From the man page of smartd:
A pending sector is a disk sector (containing 512 bytes of your data) which the device would like to mark as ``bad" and reallocate. Typically this is because your computer tried to read that sector, and the read failed because the data on it has been corrupted and has inconsistent Error Checking and Correction (ECC) codes. This is important to know, because it means that there is some unreadable data on the disk. The problem of figuring out what file this data belongs to is operating system and file system specific. You can typically force the sector to reallocate by writing to it (translation: make the device substitute a spare good sector for the bad one) but at the price of losing the 512 bytes of data stored there.
In other words, the data that's there is already gone (unless in some very rare cases reallocating works later). What is ext2/3 supposed to do about that? The drive is supposed to take care of it and remap to a spare sector. Look at hdparm -D . Scsi drives willingly reveal their defect list - Not sure how to read it on an ide disk though.
The main reason for worrying about a single sector is that this is a sector that has failed not just one read, but all read attempts made by the drive. If it was a soft error and eventually the drive had recovered the data then you'd just see the info if you use smartctl - but you don't have any immediate issues. No drive is perfect and some remapping always goes on. If you however have a hard error and have pending sectors its a sign that something more serious than normal use has happened with the drive and now it is not a question of IF your drive fails but if you got a day or a week or a month before it really goes. Many people are lucky but in the office (where we've got about 400 linux boxes, many with more than 1 drive) the stats show that between the first pending sectors and the final drive failure its an average of about 5 weeks. Enjoy :-)
Anyway, reallocation of blocks is something the drive has to handle not the filesystem.
Peter.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel B. Thurman" dant@cdkkt.com To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" fedora-list@redhat.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 4:18 AM Subject: RE: Smartd message: What does it mean?
Hmmm... or does it mean I need to completely reformat or fsck this disk throughly to ensure that it is really going bad? I am using FC4 so I wonder if there is another reason...
I will have to chek this out.
Dan
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com]On Behalf Of Benjamin Franz Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 7:10 PM To: For users of Fedora Core releases Subject: Re: Smartd message: What does it mean?
On Fri, 28 Oct 2005, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
Hi Folks,
Trying to understand this message, any ideas?
This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:
host name: xxx.xxx.com DNS domain: xxx.com NIS domain: (none)
The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/hdb, 14 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).
It means you have 14 bad sectors on your /dev/hdb hard drive. It also means it is time to buy another drive and copy your data over to it.
-- Benjamin Franz
The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
- Donald E. Knuth
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
-- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.5/150 - Release Date: 10/27/2005
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.5/150 - Release Date: 10/27/2005
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
From: "Peter Arremann" loony@loonybin.org
I have 2 machines with such messages and hdd's just running fine for 2+ years. If ext2/3 fs is not marking such sectors as "bad, i dont use it
|month before it really goes. Many people are lucky but in the office (where |we've got about 400 linux boxes, many with more than 1 drive) the stats show |that between the first pending sectors and the final drive failure its an |average of about 5 weeks. Enjoy :-)
Overhere are running for 2+ years. Both WD's. one is a 40Gb and the other one is a 120Gb. The bad sector started after 1 week after installation. On the 40gb hdd it is sector 65 and on the 120Gb it is sector 1.
|Anyway, reallocation of blocks is something the drive has to handle not the |filesystem.
Hmm it would be also better (just my mind) if the fs cant read a (bad) sector for many times then it just skip reading from it :) And why it is reading it, because some data wants read data that still is on that bad sector. The question, how to find out what data is reading data from the bad sector and then you can lets say delete a xxx.conf and replace it with a new one. Then the bad sector wil not used anymore :) But in my life time i never saw a reporting tool: "Hey Mr root, samba tries to read smb.conf but its on a not readable sector reported by smartd. delete the smb.conf, and create a new one so i can skip reading that sector forever" hehe
Danny.
p.s. i go to bed. sleep well or have a nice day.
Smartd reads the drives not the file systems, I believe. As such grown bad blocks are a bad sign. Sometimes you CAN run for a long time on such drives. All too often you lose it all with the drive fails in a critical place.
{^_^} ----- Original Message ----- From: "Danny Terweij - Net Tuning | Net" d.terweij@nettuning.net
Hi
I have 2 machines with such messages and hdd's just running fine for 2+ years. If ext2/3 fs is not marking such sectors as "bad, i dont use it anymore" then its about time that such things are going to be developed right? I do not want to replace a HDD if just 1 sector is marked bad at smartd. The smartd message is only showing up after a reboot overhere.
Danny.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel B. Thurman" dant@cdkkt.com
Hmmm... or does it mean I need to completely reformat or fsck this disk throughly to ensure that it is really going bad? I am using FC4 so I wonder if there is another reason...
I will have to chek this out.
Dan
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com
On Fri, 28 Oct 2005, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
Hi Folks,
Trying to understand this message, any ideas?
This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:
host name: xxx.xxx.com DNS domain: xxx.com NIS domain: (none)
The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/hdb, 14 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).
It means you have 14 bad sectors on your /dev/hdb hard drive. It also means it is time to buy another drive and copy your data over to it.
-- Benjamin Franz
The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
- Donald E. Knuth
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
-- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.5/150 - Release Date: 10/27/2005
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.5/150 - Release Date: 10/27/2005
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Do not pass go. Do not collect $100. Do not dilly dally around. Get a new drive and move over to it. Your only hope that it is something else is the possibility of a flaky ATA cable. Betting on this is like taking the bad odds at a craps shoot.
{o.o} Joanne said that. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel B. Thurman" dant@cdkkt.com
Hmmm... or does it mean I need to completely reformat or fsck this disk throughly to ensure that it is really going bad? I am using FC4 so I wonder if there is another reason...
I will have to chek this out.
Dan
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com
On Fri, 28 Oct 2005, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
Hi Folks,
Trying to understand this message, any ideas?
This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:
host name: xxx.xxx.com DNS domain: xxx.com NIS domain: (none)
The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/hdb, 14 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).
It means you have 14 bad sectors on your /dev/hdb hard drive. It also means it is time to buy another drive and copy your data over to it.
-- Benjamin Franz
The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
- Donald E. Knuth
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
-- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.5/150 - Release Date: 10/27/2005
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.5/150 - Release Date: 10/27/2005
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 12:02:27AM -0700, jdow wrote:
Do not pass go. Do not collect $100. Do not dilly dally around. Get a new drive and move over to it. Your only hope that it is something else is the possibility of a flaky ATA cable. Betting on this is like taking the bad odds at a craps shoot.
Joanne is correct.
First off, the fact that smartd is reporting N bad sectors does not mean that you only have N bad sectors. You probably also have a bunch that the firmware has already either re-allocated (hiding the fact that they are bad), or recovered (if the defect is small enough) and re-written.
When a drive is manufactured, it is tested, and a list of bad sectors is created. These sectors are re-allocated from spares, and the substitution is utterly transparent to the OS.
When (not if) a new defect occurs, the drive will re-read the sector a number of times, and try various tricks to recover the data. The smaller the defect, the greater likelihood of recovering the data. If the defect is small enough, the drive will simply re-write the sector, end of discusion.
When (not if) the defect gets large enough, the drive will re-allocate a substitute sector from a list of spares, and mark the old one as bad. That list of spares will eventually be exhausted, which can happen in a matter of minutes.
However, the fact that the drive has enough bad sectors that the firmware is reporting them to you means that you have more bad sectors than there were on the drive since it was manufactured. Your drive is warning you that it is about to die.
Yes, it may take several years to die. On the other hand it could take 15 minutes. 15 seconds.
Now, how much do you want to bet that it will be toward the several years end of things?
How much is your time worth? I'd rather spend a few bucks on a new hard drive, copy the data over, and be good to go than try to recover data from a dieing drive. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Been paid big bucks to do it for other people.
Do as the lady says. Now.
Then start doing regular backups.
On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 19:00:54 -0600, Charles Curley charlescurley@charlescurley.com wrote:
However, the fact that the drive has enough bad sectors that the firmware is reporting them to you means that you have more bad sectors than there were on the drive since it was manufactured. Your drive is warning you that it is about to die.
I don't think so. The sectors were reported as pending. This just means that the disk can't get a good read. It won't throw away data on its own. The person affected needs to give up on getting data off the sectors and rewrite them, at which point they should be reallocated. If he looks at the output of smartctl -a, he should be able to tell what how many sectors have been remapped and very roughly how many more spares are available.