On a second cycle preclearing a 4 TB drive (the first preclear cycle completed fine with no reported errors), the preclear process aborted and terminated about 40 % through the process (syslog attached. see  lines 1340 -1676 of the log).

 

 

After the preclear on the 4 TB drive failed the drive disappeared (mymain showed no line entry for that drive.) After rebooting the drive was recognized but a SMART report indicates sector errors: (full SMART report attached.)

 

197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      16

198 Offline_Uncorrectable  0x0010  100  100  000    Old_age  Offline      -      16

 

What I'm trying to understand is what the typical behavior of preclear is when it finds sector errors. Does it typically abort (seems unlikely) or does it just record the info and continue testing the disk.

 

Or (more likely) does the flood of sas related entries in the log, together with the fact that the preclear process aborted and the drive disappeared until reboot,  indicate a problem at some point in the SAS chain from the motherboard to the Supermicro card to the Norco Backplane (I'm running a Norco 4224 case).

 

Thanks for any help,

 

 

Harry

syslog.zip

Smart_Report.txt

Check for MB and SAS card BIOS updates.

Check for MB and SAS card BIOS updates.

 

dgaschk,

 

Thanks for responding.

 

I've already done that. MB Bios is latest available. SAS card is using .15 firmware (.21 firmware doesn't work with this board.)

 

I'm already suspicious about the MB with the Supermicro card, given problems I've encountered recently, and considering a MB rebuild. All I really want to know right now is whether or not the log attached to the original post indicates an SAS problem or if that is typical behavior for preclear when it encounters a bad sector or another problem on a disk (I doubt that's the case but I'm not sure.)

 

IOW would preclear typically spin off such errors and then abort, in the absence of hardware problems, just because it encountered a bad sector or some such thing?

 

If not, then (given other problems and anomolies I've had recently with this board with large disk drives) I'm inclined to replace the motherboard.

 

Thanks again.

 

Harry

SAS errors are causing the problem.

Thanks. That's what I thought.