[TriLUG] controller causing read errors?

[Jim]

These are internal SATA drives.  The case is a small form factor Dell 
Optiplex 755.  Sensors tell me that the CPUs are running at 32 C and 
hddtemp tells me that /dev/sda is running at 40 C.  There's only one 
drive in this machine.  It's formatted for ext4.  The first two drives 
to die in this machine were 400GB Hitachi Deskstar drives.  The current 
drive is a Maxtor 250 GB. Not sure about firmwares.  The drive is not 
part of a RAID.  I'm not passing any arguments.  They are not SSD.  The 
read errors started appearing in December on the first drive.  When I 
replaced that, the second drive started reporting errors in the first 
week.  When I replaced that the third drive started reporting errors in 
about a week.

I'll look for bulging capacitors.

Thanks for the help.



On 01/25/2011 10:21 AM, William Chandler wrote:
> Also note that SMART doesn't work on USB devices (last time I checked, over
> 2 years ago.)  How's the cooling situation in the case?  Try to make sure
> it's not overheating if possible.  Are the Hard Drives fairly large?  What's
> the vendor/firmware?  Are they connected to a RAID array?  What filesystem
> are you using?  Are you passing any specific arguments?  How often are they
> failing?  SSD or Platter?  You can also look on your machine for bulging
> capicators -- they may be sending incorrect voltages to your devices (crazy,
> but possible.)
>
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Jim<jjtuttle at trilug.org>  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm on my 3rd hard drive in a month.  Each reported read errors and then
>> reallocated sectors.  I'm starting to suspect that this isn't coincidence
>> and that the hard drive controller or other hardware is damaging the drives
>> or misreporting the SMART data.  Is this possible?
>>
>> To successfully get a replacement machine I'll have to prove that I'm not
>> making this up.  Is there anyway to track down the cause?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> --
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