Re: [gentoo-user] repair uefi vfat /boot?

[madscientistatlarge]

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 5:54 PM, Wols Lists <antlists@××××××××××××.uk> wrote:

> On 22/03/20 22:40, Caveman Al Toraboran wrote:
>
> > any idea why 1 partition (uefi vfat) is suffering errors, but the other ext4 isn't?
>
> Simple. If the surface is decaying, it will be localised. It's decided
> to hit the locality of the uefi partition.
>
> This is what would, in the old days, lead to a head crash. Once the
> magnetic layer started to physically deform (flake), the head would hit
> it which would start a cascade of debris scouring the disk surface and
> trashing the heads.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

Drives may have failed that way at one time (and still can on some drives if they are thumped hard enough), the main issue, according to drive makers is that the coating starts to crystallize, which changes it's magnetic properties (heads and how they are driven are pretty tightly optimized now).  These crystals grow over time, affecting more and more of the platter they are on.  This is why altitude and temperature cycles (well within operating specs.) will accelerate this failure, both tend to cause crystal growth.  In any case, once the drive is out of spare sectors your' data is going to disappear.

On all modern drives, running out of spare sectors means back it up quick, preferably immediately without a shutdown or reboot.  I've seen drives dying this way, until they run out of sectors (quietly) you get data changes as it miss copies the sectors involved to backup sectors (they re-read until the CRC is right, in this case it's often until there are multiple errors that make it appear to read correctly).  If you can hear your drive, and it's constantly seeking when it should be idle, or if you hear it repeatedly load and unload the head it's time to get a spare quickly, if you care about your' data but don't have it all backed up.

High operating temperature also accelerates this.  I've found keeping them under 100 Deg F. makes them last a long time, even drives I've pulled out of Tivo units have lasted me years this way, and in cable boxes or Tivo's the drive run criminally hot (at least the older ones, don't know about newer ones).

Bus for now, just get a new drive, don't waste effort beating a dying horse.  It will only frustrate you.  I've even seen a drive that passed the "long" smart test when it was failing, the data would change within a few hours! When a drive fails me, after any possible back up, I usually toss them across the room so I know not to trust them.

If drives do get particulate matter in them (sometimes the seals fail, or are just bad, or the air filter get poked etc.)  I pulled a drive out of a laptop once, took off the cover (because it was already dead) and found about a quarter teaspoon of black power that was supposed to be on the platters.  If this happens the heads get ground and more and more coating gets ground off, it accelerates very quickly.  I've taken apart dozens of failed drives, but only found this once on a failed drive.  Many drives are rated for 20G of shock while operating (200G when not spinning).  I wouldn't take those number too seriously though.

Hope you didn't lose valuable data.