smartd: what do these disk errors mean?

[kikkegek]

hi guys,

I have suceeded (with help of Bigfoot65) in setting up the amahi disk error reporting.

I have now received two errors. could you guys please help me in understanding them:

1.

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The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], 97 Offline uncorrectable sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).

]
and
2.

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The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).

they both state that:

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You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation. Another email message will be sent in 24 hours if the problem persists.

are these bad? or normal?

[bigfoot65]

Bad. I am sorry to say that appears to be the signs of a failing disk. I am experiencing the same issue with my OS drive. I don't have quite as many though.

My drive is still under warranty, so I am getting RMA replacement from Western Digital. My second drive in 6 months unfortunately.

Recommend you start planning for replacing the drive before data loss.

[kikkegek]

Bad. I am sorry to say that appears to be the signs of a failing disk. I am experiencing the same issue with my OS drive. I don't have quite as many though.

My drive is still under warranty, so I am getting RMA replacement from Western Digital. My second drive in 6 months unfortunately.

Recommend you start planning for replacing the drive before data loss.

thanks man!

I am 99% sure my drive is also still under warrentee...I'll get it replaced....Drives are cheap nowadays

[kikkegek]

in the last couple of days I have been getting the same messages, about the unreadable en pending sectors.

It is not getting worse...does this mean it is OK?

[bigfoot65]

Nope, will get worse over time. The critical part is if there is data in those sectors, it could make your server unstable or crash.

Mine started rebooting at random. Fortunately I got a replacement drive via warranty and will be installing it tonight.

[radioz]

Take a look at the Disk Utility application (Applications/System Tools/Disk Utility).

Click on the drive you want to check (/dev/sda probably).
On the panel is a SMART Status indicator. It should be green if your drive is healthy. If it is red, a failure has been detected.

Click on the 'SMART Data' icon. This will bring up a list of disk parameters for this drive.

One of the more important ones to look at is the 'Reallocated Sector Count' number. This number represents the number of sectors that failed and were successfully replaced with spares. If this number is small (say 5 or less) and unchanging, then maybe you don't have a problem. If this number grows over time (say from one day to the next), better replace the drive quickly! Your drive is failing.

If you have multiple drives, go back and check each of them.

For more information about interpreting SMART data, check with Google. There is quite a bit of information out there.

[kikkegek]

thanks man! the light is green (disk has a few bad sectors) and there are 0 reallocated sectors....which is great, I guess.

just one pending sector...

[radioz]

Great news. Just keep an eye on it to see that it doesn't get worse.