Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] smartctrl drive error @60%
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 13:59:42
Message-Id: 53AC271B.5000901@gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] smartctrl drive error @60% by Alan McKinnon
1 Alan McKinnon wrote:
2 > On 26/06/2014 13:20, Dale wrote:
3 >> Alan McKinnon wrote:
4 >>> My experiences aren't worth much in this case, what I had to deal with
5 >>> was data center setups where - the power has never gone off for 6
6 >>> years - the drives never spin down and just keep on turning year after
7 >>> year - the servers were the nice big ones Dell makes with awesome
8 >>> cooling - the data center feels like a fridge and the ambient temp
9 >>> never varies more than 1 deg - the server power supplies are seriously
10 >>> high grade, the 5V and 12V out of them are solid and do not fluctuate
11 >>> at all Add all this up and it's an almost perfect environment for
12 >>> drives to last a long time. You don't have that, not even close. I
13 >>> have only 1 little bit of anecdotal data: my nas at home has 4 x 3T WD
14 >>> Green drives in it, going on almost 2 years now. My kids hammer the
15 >>> blazes out of that thing, and ZFS scrubs keep it real busy when the
16 >>> kids don't. And those drives just keep on turning and turning and
17 >>> turning, I didn't do anything special. I put it down to statistics -
18 >>> no-one makes bad drives (or cars) these days and I haven't pulled the
19 >>> unlucky card yet. I dunno, go figure
20 >> Well, it does make good points tho. I keep my room here pretty cool.
21 >> It's not as cool as your data center but I have a window A/C and my own
22 >> heater. I don't mind it being a little cool in the winter but don't
23 >> like it warm in the summer either. The cooler the better.
24 >>
25 >> I also have the Cooler Master HAF-932 case with those really nice large
26 >> fans. The hard drives are right in front of the front intake fan. I
27 >> have a power supply that is really to big for what I have running. I
28 >> can't recall the brand and wattage just that it doesn't pull near as
29 >> much power as I thought it would. It pulls less than half what my older
30 >> and much slower puter pulled. Also, I rarely shut this thing down. I
31 >> did the other night to unplug/re-plug all the cables but other than
32 >> that, it is usually because I have lost power from the mains.
33 >>
34 >> So, keep them cool, good clean power and leave them running when ya
35 >> can. Sounds like a plan. ;-)
36 >
37 > You got it :-)
38 >
39 > hard drives are mechanical objects, not electronic ones, and they fail
40 > for mechanical reasons. Motors fail, bearings seize, spindle arms wear
41 > out. Transforming magnetic blobs on the platter into binary bits is very
42 > reliable, as long as the head is in exactly the place it is supposed to
43 > be. So the enemies of disks are environmental;
44 >
45 > - temperature and humidity changes
46 > - frequent spin ups and spin downs
47 > - dust
48 > - power dips/fluctuations and brown-outs
49 > - being dropped, knocked and generally ubused
50 >
51 > etc, etc, etc
52 >
53 > Take care of the environmental factors, and statistics fall in your
54 > favour making the odds good you'll get the life you expect
55 >
56
57 I think that is one reason I have had some pretty good luck with that.
58 I might also add, I have actually only had one computer that failed.
59 That includes the ones that folks just gave me which is quite a few.
60 Most of them just get to slow to use. The ones I build, I build them
61 like a tank. I put coolers on everything that is even a little warm.
62 My CPU cooler on my current rig is pretty large. Case fans blowing a
63 lot of air, quiet if possible. For this drive that I have going out now
64 to go out, it has to have a issue not related to cooling and such.
65 Unless it was somehow handled badly while being shipped to me, its never
66 been dropped or anything either. This is a desktop, with wheels since
67 it is on carpet, and it rarely goes anywhere. It doesn't get rattled
68 around like a laptop or something.
69
70 My old rig, AMD 2500+ in a old full tower case still runs good. I
71 booted it a month or so ago. I had a Volcano 11 or 12 on the CPU which
72 is solid copper. I replaced the northbridge cooler with a copper cooler
73 with a fan. The mosfets close to the CPU, I added coolers to them too.
74 It had 5 case fans. It wasn't quiet but it ran cool. The mobo temps
75 were usually just a couple degrees above room temp. CPU never got over
76 100F. Heck, the CPU in my current rig has never seen 110F. The highest
77 I have ever seen was 107F and that was when I was compiling and had
78 power to blink just enough to cut off my A/C for a hour or so. Maybe I
79 need a UPS for my A/C too. :-D
80
81 It seems the best thing WE can do, good power, good cooling, don't drop
82 it and keep backups.
83
84 I went back through the error logs and found this:
85
86 Jun 12 23:30:36 localhost smartd[2688]: Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], 104
87 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
88 Jun 12 23:30:36 localhost smartd[2688]: Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], 104
89 Offline uncorrectable sectors
90
91 That's the first error I could find. It went from nothing to that in
92 one huge jump. I also found this:
93
94 Jun 8 03:10:02 localhost sSMTP[7164]: Unable to locate mail
95 Jun 8 03:10:02 localhost sSMTP[7164]: Cannot open mail:25
96 Jun 8 03:10:03 localhost CROND[7145]: (root) MAIL (mailed 57 bytes of
97 output but got status 0x0001
98 )
99
100 It seems it is trying to mail something. I need to work on that when I
101 get the new drive set up. I already have smtp installed.
102
103 Dale
104
105 :-) :-)