Palimsest discrepancy

[ergodic]

Has anyone experienced Palimpsest discrepancies?

Palimsest in Fedora 16 reports a disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as failing: "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS" etc. 
SMART: 197 Current pending Sector Count Value -4 sectors.

Palimsest in Fedora 17 beta reports the same disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as "OK" 
SMART: 197 Current pending Sector Count 0 sectors OK.

Obviously one is incorrect, which one?

Regards.

[Dariusz J. Garbowski]

On 30/04/12 11:35 AM, ergodic wrote:
> Has anyone experienced Palimpsest discrepancies?
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 16 reports a disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as failing: "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS" etc.
> SMART: 197 Current pending Sector Count Value -4 sectors.
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 17 beta reports the same disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as "OK"
> SMART: 197 Current pending Sector Count 0 sectors OK.
>
> Obviously one is incorrect, which one?

Try as root:

smartctl -a /dev/sdX

(where X is of course pointing to your disk)

You can also run test of the disk (this is generally non-destructive but if your disk has bad 
sectors doing any operations on it may cause further damage so if you have any data on the disk you 
want to recover... you may want to do create image of the disk first):

smartctl -t short /dev/sdX

Dariusz

[John Reiser]

> Palimsest in Fedora 16 reports a disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as failing:  "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS" etc.
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count Value -4 sectors.
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 17 beta reports the same disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as "OK"
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count 0 sectors  OK.
>
> Obviously one is incorrect, which one?

They're both incorrect.  The Fedora 16 "Value -4" (that is, "-4" ==> 0xFFFFFFFC)
probably is a bug [although _where_ is unknown: could be palimsest, could be the
interface hardware, could be drive microcode, ...].  The Fedora 17 "OK" is suspect.
Also check with "hdparm" and other tools, even on other OS.

How old is the drive?  That model number says 3-platter, 320MB, SATA.
If it's three or more years old, then just replace it.  A new drive
is $90 or less in US, and 500GB is available for the same price
and same other specs (size, power, heat, performance, ...).
The data is worth far more than that.

--

[John Morris]

On Mon, 2012-04-30 at 12:04 -0700, John Reiser wrote:
> How old is the drive?  That model number says 3-platter, 320MB, SATA.
> If it's three or more years old, then just replace it.  A new drive
> is $90 or less in US, and 500GB is available for the same price
> and same other specs (size, power, heat, performance, ...).
> The data is worth far more than that.

Dunno about that attitude being universal.  On my workstations I use NFS
homes so there is no data, only code.  I depend on SMART being right
enough so I can usually yank a failing drive before it goes so bad the
worker can't login and use the machine.  But I could care less about any
data on it, it is only a clone; because NFS root is just too much of a
performance hit compared to the cheapness of drives these days.  I try
to keep one spare workstation ready to drop in place of a failed unit so
downtime is minimal no matter what manages to go wrong with one.

Because a failure isn't a big deal and SMART is usually pretty good
about giving an advance warning I run em until they die.  In fact if the
failure is just a few bad blocks I often zero the drive (or run the
manufacturer's low level tool) and if the SMART warning goes away I put
it back in service and usually get a few more years out of em.  My
average drive age is easily over five years on workstations.  Still have
quite a few 40GB IDE drives in service.  A 500GB drive might be dirt
cheap now but a fairly complete Linux install still fits on a 40GB drive
so why throw out perfectly servicable equip?

If your data is worth anything it shouldn't be subject to loss of a
drive regardless of age.

I.    THOU SHALT MAKE BACKUPS
II.   THOU SHALT KEEP THY BACKUPS CURRENT
III.  THOU SHALT VERIFY THY BACKUPS

[Tom Horsley]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 13:03:18 -0500
John Morris wrote:
> I depend on SMART being right
> enough so I can usually yank a failing drive before it goes so bad the
> worker can't login and use the machine.

Of course, it was the SMART firmware on my Crucial SSD drive
that made it break after 5184 hours of operation :-).
(Fortunately new firmware fixed things).

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 05/01/2012 08:18 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Tue, 01 May 2012 13:03:18 -0500
> John Morris wrote:
> > I depend on SMART being right
> > enough so I can usually yank a failing drive before it goes so bad the
> > worker can't login and use the machine.
>
> Of course, it was the SMART firmware on my Crucial SSD drive
> that made it break after 5184 hours of operation :-).
> (Fortunately new firmware fixed things).

I got hit by this too a few weeks ago. Quite nasty bug in that it will hit
every Crucial M4 owner eventually and renders the drive completely useless
but luckily also harmless because it doesn't damage anything and a simple
firmware update fixes the problem completely with no data loss.

Regards,
  Dennis

[Timothy Davis]

On Mon, 2012-04-30 at 13:35 -0400, ergodic wrote:
> Has anyone experienced Palimpsest discrepancies?
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 16 reports a disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as
> failing:  "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS" etc.
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count Value -4 sectors.
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 17 beta reports the same disk (MAXTOR
> STM3320620AS) as "OK"
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count 0 sectors  OK.
>
> Obviously one is incorrect, which one?
>
> Regards.

I've got both F16 and F17 and have never seen anything like that.
Check and make you have the correct kernel modules installed

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2012-04-30 at 13:35 -0400, ergodic wrote:
> Has anyone experienced Palimpsest discrepancies?
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 16 reports a disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as
> failing:  "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS" etc.
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count Value -4 sectors.
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 17 beta reports the same disk (MAXTOR
> STM3320620AS) as "OK"
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count 0 sectors  OK.
>
> Obviously one is incorrect, which one?

Interpretation of the SMART data can be tricky. There's a longstanding
bug where palimpsest considers numbers of 'bad' sectors that are well
within manufacturers' tolerances to indicate a failing disk:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=498115

and it's possible you hit that in F16 and it's been corrected, at least
for your particular disk, in F17. That '-4' does seem odd, though, as
another poster mentioned. The bug report linked above has some useful
diagnostic steps you can take.

[ergodic]

Finally back in town again and back to Palimpsest.
A little background first.  My box is a  Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield at 2.4GHz, Asus P5K mobo, 6GB core, XFX GeForce 8600 video card and two hard drive drawers. For OS, Grub1 multi-booting Fedora 15, 16, 17β, Win-XP and Win-7.

By January 2011, Fedora 14 reported for the Maxtor 320GB drive: “DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS   Age: 136.0 days     PwrCycles: 1285    Bad sectors: -4”,   with a recommendation for immediate back-up and replacement.
At that time a Seagate ST1000  1TB drive was installed internally in the box and partitioned to accept various data partitions and a Fedora  OS to be used as a back-up OS.  The system normally operates from one of the OSs in a drive slipped in one of the drive drawers.  All data in the Maxtor 320GB was moved to the Seagate drive and is periodically imaged  to another external  drive via a drawer.

The  Maxtor 320 GB drive was imaged to a new WD 320GB drive for back-up.  The Maxtor was kept in service to see when it would fail.  So far it has not!

What has changed in F-17β from F-14,F-15 and F-16 to change the report to OK with 0 bad sectors.

All three previous Fedoras still report for the disk as of today:  “DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS  Age: 248.3 days     PwrCycles: 3370      Bad sectors: -4”.      This amounts to   2695.2  hours  and   2085  power cycles: since the first warning.

A Samsung 160GB that was removed from service o  2010-11-07 at	 age: 90.7 days  with  1115 power  cycles and  12 bad sectors, shows under F-14, F-15 and F-16 “ Disk has a few bad sectors” . With F-17β it shows “ Disk is OK            Age: 104.7 days    Power Cycles: 1271  Bad Sectors: 12    Pending Sectors: 0”

hdtune-224 in Windows XP reports the Maxtor as OK.

My question is one of trust,  which one is accurate?

However, I am inclined to believe that is the way Maxtor reports the parameter in question.

Thanks to all,

Cheers.

----- Original Message -----
On Mon, 2012-04-30 at 13:35 -0400, ergodic wrote:
> Has anyone experienced Palimpsest discrepancies?
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 16 reports a disk (MAXTOR STM3320620AS) as
> failing:  "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS" etc.
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count Value -4 sectors.
>
> Palimsest in Fedora 17 beta reports the same disk (MAXTOR
> STM3320620AS) as "OK"
> SMART:  197 Current pending Sector Count 0 sectors  OK.
>
> Obviously one is incorrect, which one?

Interpretation of the SMART data can be tricky. There's a longstanding
bug where palimpsest considers numbers of 'bad' sectors that are well
within manufacturers' tolerances to indicate a failing disk:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=498115

and it's possible you hit that in F16 and it's been corrected, at least
for your particular disk, in F17. That '-4' does seem odd, though, as
another poster mentioned. The bug report linked above has some useful
diagnostic steps you can take.