woolooloo Posted November 8, 2008 Share Posted November 8, 2008 I just pulled a pair of 250 GB SATA 3.0 Samsung drives out of my desktop that I have been using without problems for a couple years. I figured I'd throw one in the array and use it as a cache drive. However, my new Adaptec SATA controller said it had a smart failure, and smartctl said it was failing now on spin up time. I pulled the drive and stuck the other one into the same slot and got the exact same error. I put a newer 500GB drive into the slot and there was no error. I put the 250 into another slot on the same controller, same problem. I just ran a short test on one of them and the results are below. I guess I'm asking what the chances that both of these drives that have been working fine are both having the same exact failure at the same time? Could it be that this model drive just has a problem with this particular test? I don't want to use it as a cache drive if it is going to fail, but I don't want to toss a perfectly good drive either. Another problem is the Adaptec card sits and waits for you to acknowledge the error before booting up, so I'm not sure if there is a way to get around that or not. === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: SAMSUNG SP2504C Serial Number: S09QJ1UA125759 Firmware Version: VT100-33 User Capacity: 250,059,350,016 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 7 ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 4a Local Time is: Fri Nov 7 22:09:18 2008 GMT+5 SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED! Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA. See vendor-specific Attribute list for failed Attributes. General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 73) The previous self-test completed having a test element that failed and the test element that failed is not known. Total time to complete Offline data collection: (4838) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off supp ort. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. No Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 80) minutes. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_ FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 253 100 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 001 001 025 Pre-fail Always FAILI NG_NOW 30208 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 939 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 253 253 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 253 253 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0025 253 253 015 Pre-fail Offline - 0 9 Power_On_Half_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 141h+13m 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0033 253 253 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012 253 002 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 460 190 Unknown_Attribute 0x0022 139 127 000 Old_age Always - 33 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 139 127 000 Old_age Always - 33 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1415 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 253 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 253 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 253 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x000a 253 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate 0x000a 253 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 202 TA_Increase_Count 0x0032 253 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA _of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 16947 - # 2 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 16947 - # 3 Short offline Completed: unknown failure 90% 16947 - SMART Selective Self-Test Log Data Structure Revision Number (0) should be 1 SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 0 Warning: ATA Specification requires selective self-test log data structure revis ion number = 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted November 8, 2008 Share Posted November 8, 2008 The SMART test is done by the firmware on the drive itself... If it is saying the drive is taking too long to spin up to pass its test ,it usually indicates the drive is probably experiencing excessive friction in its bearings... Of course, it could have been reporting this all along, even when brand new, and your old PC never bothered to tell you about it. Perhaps its disk controller did not care. Or, If the 250GB drives are old drives, they might draw a lot more current from the power supply than the newer 500 Gig drive.. It might be stressing a marginal power supply.. I'd put the drive in another PC and download and use a manufacturers diagnostic disk to test it there. Disk drives are too cheap these days to trust your data to one that is marginal. (Although, sometimes we are very frugal, and want to use them until they crash, taking our data with them...) Joe L. Quote Link to comment
woolooloo Posted November 8, 2008 Author Share Posted November 8, 2008 Or, If the 250GB drives are old drives, they might draw a lot more current from the power supply than the newer 500 Gig drive.. It might be stressing a marginal power supply.. I'd put the drive in another PC and download and use a manufacturers diagnostic disk to test it there. Disk drives are too cheap these days to trust your data to one that is marginal. (Although, sometimes we are very frugal, and want to use them until they crash, taking our data with them...) Joe L. Thanks Joe. This drives makes 13 on a good quality 650W power supply, I guess if it has higher current requirements it could be stressing the system when they are all spinning up - or should 650W be ok for this? In any case, I will put it back in my desktop and find some Samsung diagnostic tools as you suggest, that will put a different PS into play though I guess I could pull half my drives and in my unRaid to reduce the load and see if it can power up without the error. I agree with what you are saying about trusting the data to a bad drive though, it just seemed unlikely that both of these drives are bad, but they could be from the same lot, so who knows. Since my unRaid is normally headless (I just installed a head since I installed the new Adaptec SATA card and wanted to make sure it was ok), do you know if there is a way to get automatically notified of SMART failures? Thanks again. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted November 8, 2008 Share Posted November 8, 2008 This problem does seem to point to a PSU issue. Either those drives suck a huge amount of current at spinup, or the PSU could be defective and not delivering its full oomph. If it is not the PSU, I am still a bit skeptical of 2 drive failures of exactly the same model and vintage failing with exactly the same symptoms as you have found. Samsung drives have a reputation of being a bit quirky, and you could be hitting such a quirk with your controller. (Search the forums and you'll find numerous issues with reporting temperature readings.) I had some problems a few years back with incompatibility of 250G/300G drives with certain motherboards with certain SATA hard drives. (I think these were Maxtor, but maybe it was WD). Although I agree with the sentiment to not take unnecessary risks with an iffy drive, I would not just toss these out without doing more research and testing to determine if they work in other systems. Although 250G is not terribly large by todays standards, it is a useful size to have in a "hand-me-down" PC or a test unRAID server. Quote Link to comment
woolooloo Posted November 10, 2008 Author Share Posted November 10, 2008 Had a chance to play with this a bit. First I pulled about 10 drives out to reduce the load on the PS and still had the same problem. I really don't think it is related to the PS at this point. I pulled the drive off my new PCIe Adaptec controller and put it on one of my PCI Promise controllers. Smartctl passed and only showed that that test had failed in the past. A short test also passed where short tests failed with an unknown error on the other controller. Any ideas about why switching the controller would make a difference? I'm going to throw one of the drives into a Windows box today and test it out, but I'm guessing at this point the drives are fine. Unrelated - thank you to everyone who helped getting a clean shutdown on power button working, I finally got to test that today and it is great! Quote Link to comment
jimwhite Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 what sort of Adaptec controller? Quote Link to comment
woolooloo Posted November 11, 2008 Author Share Posted November 11, 2008 what sort of Adaptec controller? 1430SA http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204084542 Quote Link to comment
jimwhite Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 interesting... I recently found that under Vista, Smartctl doesn't work at all on the drives on a 1430sa controller... Quote Link to comment
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