[mdlug] New hard drive
Aaron Kulkis
akulkis00 at gmail.com
Sat Jan 10 12:39:50 EST 2009
Drew wrote:
> Got it at Microcenter at a discount as it was missing the box,
> instructions, and CD; but the plastic wrapper
> was still sealed. Still I figured it behooved me to examine it
> anyway. Knowing that modern hard drives play
> hide-the-sausage with bad sectors and report a perfect disk as long
> as possible, I tried Spinrite 6.0, which
> refused to work with the disk, blaming my BIOS.
>
Having come across the subject of Spinrite before when
someone said that it's not all that it's cracked up to
be, I read the web page, and I noticed a large amount
of double-talk and jargon used in nonsensical ways.
If a the author of some technical software can't even
explain the software even in technical terms, I kind
of doubt his ability to do what he claims to be doing.
> So I found a rescue image with smartctl on it, specifically RIPLinux,
> actually not a bad distro. (It worked with
> my wireless card out-of-the-box and had Firefox 3.5 among other
> things - too bad it had no printer support
> else I'd consider it as the new main OS. I might anyway.)
>
I would trust smartctl over spinrite any day.
For one, spinrite refers to obsolete disk storage techniques
(remember RLL and MFM disks), claiming to gain access to
things which are TOTALLY hidden by the drive electronics
of IDE, SCSI, SATA, and SAS disks...basically anything
manufactured in the last 15 years that isn't a floppy.
2nd... smartctl's source code has been inspected by dozens
of people. I have zero confidence that spinrite's source
code has been looked at by even 3 people.
> After running a short and a long test (smartctl --test=short|long...)
> and waiting the specified amount of time
> for the tests to complete, I then ran smartctl --all and got the following:
>
> smartctl 5.39 2008-12-26 22:12 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-8 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
>
> === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
> Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Blue EIDE family
> Device Model: WDC WD3200AAJB-22WGA0
> Serial Number: WD-WCARW4134886
> Firmware Version: 00.02C01
> User Capacity: 320,072,933,376 bytes
> Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
> ATA Version is: 8
> ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
> Local Time is: Thu Jan 8 02:40:54 2009 UTC
> 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: (0x80) Offline data collection activity
> was never started.
> Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
> Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test
> routine completed
> without error or no self-test has ever
> been run.
> Total time to complete Offline
> data collection: (8400) seconds.
> Offline data collection
> capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
> Auto Offline data collection
> on/off support.
> Suspend Offline collection upon new
> command.
> Offline surface scan supported.
> Self-test supported.
> 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.
> General Purpose Logging supported.
> Short self-test routine
> recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
> Extended self-test routine
> recommended polling time: ( 100) minutes.
> Conveyance self-test routine
> recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
> SCT capabilities: (0x203f) SCT Status supported.
> SCT Feature Control supported.
> SCT Data Table supported.
>
> SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
> 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 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always
> - 0
> 3
> Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 160 160 021 Pre-fail Always
> - 4983
> 4
> Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
> - 9
> 5
> Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always
> - 0
> 7
> Seek_Error_Rate 0x000e 200 200 051 Old_age Always
> - 0
> 9
> Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
> - 5
> 10
> Spin_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 253 051 Old_age Always
> - 0
> 11 Calibration_Retry_Count
> 0x0012 100 253 051 Old_age Always - 0
> 12
> Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
> - 8
> 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count
> 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 6
> 193
> Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always
> - 9
> 194
> Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 115 108 000 Old_age Always
> - 32
> 196 Reallocated_Event_Count
> 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
> 197
> Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always
> - 0
> 198
> Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 253 000 Old_age Offline
> - 0
> 199
> UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 193 000 Old_age Always
> - 24
> 200
> Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 051 Old_age Offline
> - 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 Completed without error 00% 4 -
> # 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2 -
>
> 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.
>
> It looks good as far as I could see. But I'd like expert comment on
> it. Also I've been told that Google has
> found zero correlation between smartctl results and disk life. Should
> I be doing something else to get
> the hard drive to tell the truth about its bad sector count?
>
> Assuming all is well: What distros would serve me best?
>
> My 160G has Fedora Core 4, plus a kanotix boot CD copied to a hard
> disk partition. I might put multiple
> distros on the new drive. Wanted in as few distros as possible:
>
> * Support for ACX100 chipset wireless card
> * Support for Samsung ML1710 printer
> * Screen resolution 1280x1024 or better on OptiQuest monitor
> * Virtual machine software
> * Latest Firefox, other browsers, video and sound players, plus all codecs
> * Latest non-Beta Open Office
> * Support for BT848 Video Capture card (less important)
>
> Recommendations?
>
> ----
>
> - Drew.
>
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