[nflug] Hardware Issue

[Sam Stern]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: nflug-bounces at nflug.org [mailto:nflug-bounces at nflug.org]
>On Behalf Of Frank Kumro
>Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 01:41 PM
>To: nflug at nflug.org
>Subject: Re: [nflug] Hardware Issue
>
>So finished the scan and the results are below. It appears everything
>passed but errors are in the file. They show READ DMA EXT - is this
>signs the drive is going?
>

Generally Speaking, yes - the drive is slowly dieing. If you need to get
data off the drive or get a bit more life out of it; you can force the ide
electronics to replace the bad sectors with good sectors from it's stash of
reserve good sectors. However, more sectors will go bad and the drive will
die -- and Die soon. What follows is only a partial fix; the drive will die
but I have extended the effective life of a drive showing the "DMA READ EXT
errors" by up to 18 months with this trick. Once you have gotten your
information backed up, your own tolerance for risk will dictate if you throw
the drive away immediacy, ask for an rma (if in warrantee) or attempt to
reuse the drive for low value data.

1) Boot to single user mode or boot to a live cd
2) if using knoppix, start the syslog daemon /etc/init.d/syslogd start
3) issue a "hdparm -D1 /dev/hdx " <--- this activates the IDE defect
management as it's not always turned on. It usually returns an error but
that error be ignored
3a) If it's dma capable, then make a point to turn on dma and 32 bit
transfers (hdparm -c1 d1). You may also want to disable apm and acoustic
management to speed things along (hdparm -M254 -B255 -Z1). You can use
hdparm -tT to determine if these carious changes are helping speed access or
not.
4) now issue a "time badblocks -nsv "<-- this starts the low level scan
using a non destructive test. This tool will force the sector rewrite with
as much recoverable data as possible.
5) WAIT. I mean, WAIT a LONG TIME. Like, hours. My 250gb Maxtor takes 13
hours to complete this process. It's been "extended" in this manner three
times.

I've used this successfully on ext2, ext3 and reiserfs volumes. Please note
that if the drive is badly damaged, this will permit only a partial recovery
as the amount of damaged sectors may be greater than the amount of reserve
sectors. Also note that the data recovered may be corrupt if only partial
data is read from a failing sector and then written back to a good sector.

It's also important to note that this command will make your drive appear to
no longer have damage. So if you have asked or are thinking of asking for a
RMA for the drive, get an error code and RMA from Seagate before running
this tool or you will not be able to get an RMA (I've done this to myself
several time now ;< )


P.S. According to
http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp your drive is
out of warrantee, so you might want to eke as much life as possible from the
drive ;>
Good Luck!

Sam S.


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