I have a system with a potentially broken disk, but the disk passes all manner of diagnostics. I have been unable to confirm that the disk is broken. What are my options?
I could just replace the disk, but because this situation is very similar to another more severe situation I have (long story), I'd like to actually make a proper diagnosis as opposed to randomly binning hardware.
The issue and history is this:
I had a Debian Linux PC (500 MHz P3) acting as router, nagios and munin.
It crashed every couple of weeks. No logs or dmesg could be obtained (because it's an old Compaq that only boots when you configure it as keyboardless, making connecting a keyboard later, once it's booted, impossible).
At the time, I just replaced the computer with another Compaq (P4 2.4 GHz) because I thought the hardware was faulty. However, it still crashed every couple of weeks.
the difference is that on this computer, I can still SSH into it. It gives all kinds of errors on hda.
I'd like to confirm that the disk is broken, but nothing I do confirms this:
SMART error logs shows no errors. Normally when a disk starts acting up, SMART my pass, but it still records a read-error in the error log.
SMART self-test (smartctl -t long /dev/sda) completes without errors.
re-allocated sector count (a tell-tale parameter) has been 31 all its life, even when the disk was still in use in my desktop PC years ago, and it still is. The figure never changed.
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=4096 passes with flying colors.
What else can I do to assess the health of the drive?
Again, this is not about making this router fully functional again, this is a disk forensic question, because it just so happens that I have another server that potentially has the same problem, and knowing the answer to this will possibly help me greatly.
For the record, below are logs and such.
This is the smartctl -a output:
smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and 7200.7 Plus family
Device Model: ST3120026A
Serial Number: 5JT1CLQM
Firmware Version: 3.06
User Capacity: 120,034,123,776 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 6
ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2
Local Time is: Mon Jul 1 21:18:33 2013 CEST
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: PASSED
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: ( 24) The self-test routine was aborted by
the host.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 430) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
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.
No General Purpose Logging support.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 85) minutes.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
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 050 046 006 Pre-fail Always - 47766662
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 096 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 10
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 31
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 084 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 820305
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 048 048 000 Old_age Always - 46373
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 605
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 036 065 000 Old_age Always - 36
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 050 046 000 Old_age Always - 47766662
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 196 000 Old_age Always - 6
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs 0x0032 100 253 000 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 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 46361 -
# 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 46358 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 12046 -
# 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 10472 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 10471 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 10471 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 6770 -
# 8 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 5958 -
# 9 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 5951 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 5024 -
#11 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 5024 -
#12 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3697 -
#13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 237 -
#14 Short offline Completed without error 00% 145 -
#15 Short offline Completed without error 00% 69 -
#16 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 68 -
#17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 66 -
#18 Short offline Completed without error 00% 49 -
#19 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 -
#20 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 -
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision 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.
And this is the dmesg error when it has crashed (which repeats for a bunch of different sectors):
[1755091.211136] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[1755091.211144] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[1755091.211151] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 08 fe ad 38 00 00 08 00
[1755091.211166] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 150908216
