Hard Drives Failing ?

[kdeuser]

Hello,

I am a bit worried about the 3 drives in my pc.

One drive is only a few months old .

Two of them have `FAILING` in the temperature attribute , both are seagate - 4tb and 2tb . The other drive is a 3tb wd with bad sectors gaining on every restart.

I constantly have to restart the 2tb drive so as to access files.

Should i be worried.

Screen 2tb seagate :



Screen 3tb wd :



Screen tb seagate :



Thanks.

[oshunluvr]

Re. the temps: Drive manufacturers regard attribute 190 (Airflow temp) as informational 0 i.e. not critical. Besides, 45 isn't that hot. Could be a mis-config in /etc/smartd.conf or blocked or poor access to the air holes on the drive case. Attrib. 194 is the critical one.

Re the read errors, note the part where it says to ignore this attribute on Seagate drives:

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate

• This is an indicator of the current rate of errors of the low level physical sector read operations. In normal operation, there are ALWAYS a small number of errors when attempting to read sectors, but as long as the number remains small, there is NO issue with the drive. Error correction information and retry mechanisms are in place to catch and fix these errors. Manufacturers therefore determine an optimal level of errors for each drive model, and set up an appropriate scale for monitoring the current error rate. For example, if 3 errors per 1000 read operations seems near perfect to the manufacturer, then an error rate of 3 per 1000 ops might be set to an attribute VALUE of 100. If the rate increased to 10 per 1000, then the rate might be scaled to 80 (completely under manufacturer control, and NEVER revealed or explained to us!).
• They are called Raw Reads to distinguish them from the more common term 'read errors', which represent a much higher level read operation. What we usually refer to as a 'read error' is an error returned by a read process, that has attempted a series of one or more seeks and raw reads, plus optional error corrections and retries. It either returns an indicator of total success plus the sector data (considered to be in perfect shape), or it returns an error code, and no sector data.
• PLEASE completely ignore the RAW_VALUE number! Only Seagates report the raw value, which yes, does appear to be the number of raw read errors, but should be ignored, completely. All other drives have raw read errors too, but do not report them, leaving this value as zero only. To repeat, Seagates are not worse than other drives because they appear to have raw read errors, rather they are the only one to report the number. I suspect that others do not report the number to avoid a lot of confusion, and questions for their tech support people. Seagate leaves those of us who provide tech support the job of answering the constant questions about this number. Hopefully now that you understand this, you will never bother a kind IT person with questions about the Raw_Read_Error_Rate RAW_VALUE again?
• [incomplete?]
• Critical attribute - if its WORST falls below its THRESH, then the drive will be considered FAILED

Although, never a bad idea to have a backup.

[kdeuser]

Thanks for answering oshunluvr,

Basically, you are saying it`s like a false positive.

blocked or poor access to the air holes on the drive case

The pc is in fact a multimedia pc , 2 drives are on top of each other ( the 2 seagates ) and packed with cables.

Yep, i think i will get rid of the dvd drive and install one of the seagates there.

Thanks again for this advise.

[oshunluvr]

IF you do some re-arranging, re-run the long smart test on all the drives and see if anything changes. Report back if you wouldn't mind. I'd be interested to know.

[kdeuser]

@oshunluvr,

I placed one of the seagate drives on top of the dvd drive just to see if the drives would be cooler. If the result is positive then the seagate would replace the dvd drive.

So, the pc was working well until late yesterday when accessing a movie from the seagate. No folders ,files i.e. blank. I also went into the other seagate and that was blank too.

Went into Gpart to see if it could fix the drives some how but threw back something like ( can not sync to sdd1 ) . Another message popped up saying try again , ignore or abort. Same thing happened with the other seagate , so unable to fix any errors .

Attempted to access the drives again but same result. The only way i found ( as i have been doing ) was to restart the pc. This would suggest temperature is high in the drives ? but how can this be if the drives are now separate.....

I am now thinking on the lines of the power supply which is 300w, could be small for 4 drives if you include the ssd system drive - maybe ?

Anyway, ran the smart test , self-test extended , came back after an hour and seemed to have finished but there was no report saying the drive is ok ?

Confusing ............

[oshunluvr]

This will help you check your power usage:

http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html?name=Power-Supply-Wattage-Calculator

If two drives were misbehaving at the same time, I'd suspect something other than the drives - cables,, power, motherboard, etc. Restarting the PC wouldn't instantly cool the drives so I doubt it's the temps. The power supply seems a likely candidate. 300W seems really low for 5 drives and a DVD. You could probably test it by unplugging two of the seagates and checking function, then unplug the other two. If they work OK in pairs but not with all four plugged in you might suspect the PSU. One way temp could be effecting this is the air temp in the room and inside the PC could be overheating your PSU making it less efficient and thus reducing it's output.

As far as the smart test, do this the check it:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

Use whatever drive it is - sda, sdb, sdc...

and look for

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     17961         -

[kdeuser]

@oshunluvr,

Removed the pc outer casing and looks like those hard drive issues have gone . You could really feel the heat from the components as the casing came off .An hour later, psu and drives were at least 10 degrees C lower.

I am now looking at 2 ventilation fans for the drives and will more than definitely be removing the dvd drive to make space.

Space is at a premium as the pc was built for one hard drive and over the years installed 3 more.

The link to calculate psu wattage was vary useful - my outage was 268w , so my existing 300w psu is ok even with 4 drives.

The smart-drive-test (extended) went ok too , all in all pleased with the results.

I will report back on the install of the coolers for the drives.

Thanks for all the help on this.

[oshunluvr]

Likely all that extra heat in the case lowered the power output of the PSU and stressed your drives. I would either leave it open or upgrade your cooling fans. Glad it looks like we found the issue.