BlackCat

Only the manufacturer knows how to interpret the "raw" results for most attributes. Read error rates especially. You and I use the "normalized" values. As long as they are above the affiliated failure threshold, they are fine. The faliure threshold is 006 You started out with a value of 100. It INCREASED from 100 (got better) when the first pre-clear and finished with a value of 118. It has the starting to average downward, now at 116, but still better than the factory initialized value of 100. Remember, it has to drop to 6 before the SMART firmware will consider the drive to have failed. Please download the newer preclear_disk.sh script. (Just posted a few days ago) as it has a much easier output format for less-experienced users such as yourself. Upgrading the disk firmware to fix a bug is usually a good idea. Drive manufacturers rarely issue updates unless their problems are very serious. Joe L. Thanks Joe, I'll go ahead and download the new script.

I ran preclear 3 times on my Seagate drive (Firmware Version: CC34). I have some Raw_Read_Error_Rate errors. I think the drive is fine because on the second and third preclears the value only changed by 1. I wanted to double check since this will be my parity drive. 1st Preclear: < 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 100 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 143233 > 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 118 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 199111887 2nd Preclear: < 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 118 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 199127430 > 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 117 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 1596701 3rd Preclear: < 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 117 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 159764581 > 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 116 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 115106924 Is this something the firmware upgrade to CC35 would help solve? I have attached the system logs just in-case the drive is not fine or more info is needed. Thanks Seagate-Barracuda_Preclear-Syslogs.zip

Spinbot thanks for the help. I realize this HDD issue is getting a bit off topic and probably should have gone in hardware, but can someone give me some idea of what is going on with my drive or at least where to look? I've been spending hours and hours and hours (I know like everyone else is), but I can't seem to find why this drive is so much slower and has much less read and writes after formatting compared to disk2. I just want to be able to understand my hardware before I get too deep into saturating the server with data. I was able to transfer a movie file(through shares in my network places) onto disk1 (the slow drive), that took about 2.5 hours for 8GB. I also transfer the same file to disk2 and that only took about a hour. Do I need the bwm-ng package to determine the actual disk performance for reading and writing data? Should I just change my sata cable and run preclear again and depending on the results switch Hot-Swap Bays? I don't have the full syslogs from my Disk 1 preclears because I only copied the SMART data, which was fine. Thanks for any help or pointers in the right direction.

This leads me to believe that disk 1 didn't format properly since the read/write of your fresh drive is similar to my disk 2, but my disk1 looks like it has no activity. I wonder if this could also be part of any possible problem causing the very slow pre-clear. I have a parity disk but it needs pre-clearing as well. I was going to wait until I had done some initial population of my data disks (original data still kept, since not protected by parity) before adding it. *Edit: hdparm -I report attached if it helps anything. Although I suspect no since not errors are being reported. HDparm_Disk1-12-12-2010.txt

I jumpered both drives. I didn't see a spot for individual ports in the BIOs but I did change it over from IDE to SATA. I have the SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O motherboard, SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B hot swap bay(s), and locking sata cables from monoprice I also attached an image(don't know where to host it) of when I added disk two to my pool after it has formatted. I haven't copied over any data but disk1 shows 49 reads and 38 writes, but disk 2 shows 33,298,778 reads and 3,830,610. Both show zero errors. Why such a big difference before even copying data over. Syslog_After_Preclear_Add_and_Format-12-12-2010.txt

Disk 2: 1st PreClear > 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 100 253 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 --- > 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 63c63 < 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 42 --- > 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 43 67c67 < 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 --- > 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 Every thing here looks good. Disk 2: 2nd Preclear < 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 50 --- > 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 52 Looks good on the second pass Raw Read and UDMA Errors didn't show up. The Load Cycle Count is still good, because the raw value is only important to the Manufacture and the Start and current values are the same. Now here is my question. I committed the sin of buying two disks from newegg within a week from each other so both drives have same manufacturing date and site code. Both drives have been successfully precleared twice. The cycle times for 2 preclears on my first disk were 36 hrs and 44-45 hrs. Now my second disk took 24 and 25 hrs for two preclears. I have posted the cycle times below. From all the cycle times I have seen through this thread my disk1 zeroing time seems excessively slow. The only thing I saw earlier was that this could be affected by other activity on the server, but the only thing running was the preclear. I know each drive has its own characteristics, but is there something else that could be the cause like a SATA cable or the drive bay port on the backplane? Thanks for any insight. Disk1: Device Model: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 Serial Number: WD-WCAZA0324519 : Firmware Version: 51.0AB51 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes Disk1 1st Pre-Clear Cycle time: I failed to copy all the system log info but the cycle time was about 36 hours Disk1 2nd Pre-Clear Cycle time: == Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 8:20:16 (66 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 21:47:41 (25 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 14:39:26 (37 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Total Time : 44:48:31 Disk2: Device Model: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 Serial Number: WD-WCAZA0423649 Firmware Version: 51.0AB51 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes Disk2 1st Pre-Clear Cycle time: == Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 7:00:00 (79 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 5:52:08 (94 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 12:15:08 (45 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Total Time : 25:08:27 == == Total Elapsed Time 25:08:27 Disk2 2nd Pre-Clear Cycle time: == Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 6:07:27 (90 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 5:43:43 (96 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 12:14:26 (45 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Total Time : 24:06:45 == == Total Elapsed Time 24:06:45

That's how I would interpret those results. So then does that mean because mine went under the previous value that something is wrong or does it need to be run a third time to seem if it keeps going down? If you find the time to do a little bit of reading in this thread you would see that the 100 200 and 253 values are those used by the manufacturers when a disk is initially manufactured and then set to either a 100 or 200 once the disk gets a bit of time on it. There is no "standard" and it is sometimes different by disk model even within a brand. The ONLY "failure" is if the normalized value goes below the threshold. Other than that, according to SMART, the disk has not failed. As long as the pre-clear said it was successful and no attribute is below its threshold your disk is working. The only attributes we really care about in pre-clearing (and where the "raw" value has some meaning to anyone other than the manufacturer) are re-allocated sectors or sectors pending re-allocation. Joe L. Thanks Joe, sorry I was trying to read it and figure what value is what. I had thought that earlier in the thread there was talk about if the numbers where going down it might not be good or the drive was just more susceptible to wear, I got confused. I will continue reading. Thanks again.

That's how I would interpret those results. So then does that mean because mine went under the previous value that something is wrong or does it need to be run a third time to seem if it keeps going down?

Ok so I ran my second pre-clear, I'll attach the log. So I had a couple of differences this time. 1) The time went from about 36 hrs the first time to around 45 hrs for the second. 2) The SMART Attributes table was nearly the same except in my 2nd preclear the Raw Value for the Load Cycle Count went up to 24 from 23 3) I got these errors. Based on the first few pages of this thread they might be a problem because the second column in the table went down instead of up and the third column increased? ============================================================================ Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: S.M.A.R.T. error count differences detected after pre-clear Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: note, some 'raw' values may change, but not be an indication of a problem Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: 58c58 Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: < 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: --- Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: > 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 Dec 9 13:20:15 Tower preclear_disk-diff[14034]: ============================================================================ Syslog-Disk1_2nd_Preclear-12-09-2010.txt

Thanks

Ok sounds good, I'll run it once more. Better safe than sorry. Once this has finished for the second time, I will be able to populate it while I pre-clear my other drives? I'm pretty sure I read that at the beginning but wanted to make sure.

looks fine to me too. The time will not affect the pre-clear. Joe I read earlier in the post that you recommend running a few pre-clear cycles to verify everything is fine. How many cycles do you suggest for a drive that takes 36 hrs to complete?

Hello, I just ran pre-clear on my first disk. I'm attaching the syslog, I think I have all the correct info in there. I think it looks fine to me, am I correct? Also, should I run pre-clear anymore on this disk? Obviously the day is off by one and the time is wrong because I didn't think to set it in the settings menu, will this affect anything now that I have fixed it? Syslog-Disk1_Preclear-12-07-2010.txt