Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[aabdou]

I bought a ST31500341AS drive. I started getting the clicking noises that others have reported. I RMA'd it, and got another one, and immediately got the clicking noises.

After doing another RMA, this drive started off fine. After a couple of weeks, the clicking started again (and along with it, freezing). This is my THIRD drive... what else can I do? Is there any chance that it's some other hardware of mine (not enough power?). I am hesitant to think that it's anything but the drive, as it works fine for some time before failing. 

I recorded the clicking noises: Memo.wav (new window)

Message Edited by aabdou on 11-01-2009 07:27 PM

Message Edited by aabdou on 11-01-2009 07:32 PM

[aabdou]

any ideas what else I should be looking for? Do the clicking noises suggest anything but a bad drive?

[fzabkar]

Clicking and freezing would suggest that your latest drive also has a problem. You may like to contact the data recovery experts at HDD Guru for their opinions:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-data-recovery-and-repair-f1.html

Otherwise here are some sound samples from failed drives:

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20051016010750/http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/cffe836ed7c12018862565b000530c74/4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument

Here are a few SMART diagnostic and benchmarking tools.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows/Linux):

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HD Tune:

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

CrystalDiskMark:

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

smartmontools (Linux/Windows):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/files/

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Download

See this article for SMART info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Comparison of S.M.A.R.T. tools:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_S.M.A.R.T._tools

List of SMART tools:

http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/smart/dload.php

[aabdou]

So I ran the following test in the different machine (trying to rule out the hardware).

Ran SMARTCTL in ubuntu, and got the following:

 SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
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   118   099   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       190758838
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   100   092   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       67
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       2
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   060   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       1202137
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       250
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       46
184 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   005   005   000    Old_age   Always       -       95
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   060   060   045    Old_age   Always       -       40 (Lifetime Min/Max 25/40)
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   040   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       40 (0 17 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   040   038   000    Old_age   Always       -       190758838
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       137043816481012
241 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3644778669
242 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       2316619281

I then started zero'ing the drive (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1)

While the drive was zero'ing, I ran smartctl again, and the numbers were increasing everytime:

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
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   118   099   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       200012075
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   100   092   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       67
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       2
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   060   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       1204232
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       250
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       46
184 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   005   005   000    Old_age   Always       -       95
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   057   057   045    Old_age   Always       -       43 (Lifetime Min/Max 25/43)
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   043   043   000    Old_age   Always       -       43 (0 17 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   040   038   000    Old_age   Always       -       200012075
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       37357625540852
241 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3653255789
242 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       2325018272
 

 Does anyone have any ideas? I'm looking at Hardware_ECC_Recovered, Reallocated_Sector. Both seem to be a good indication that the drive is bad, but like I said earlier, this is my THIRD one.... what are my odds?

[fzabkar]

A reallocated sector count of 2 is not so bad, but I would worry if this number grows on a regular basis.

Hardware_ECC_Recovered and Raw_Read_Error_Rate both appear to be a sector count, not an error count. Likewise, Seek_Error_Rate is a seek count, not an error count. In fact, the SER is zero errors in 1.2 million seeks.

See the following articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk.M.A.R.T.#Seagate_raw_Seek_Error_Rate_attribute

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&message.id=8700

The meaning of the SMART attributes is explained here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes

I would have thought that the following results should be identical, but obviously I'm not understanding the data correctly. Maybe the extra reads are due to read look ahead caching?

Difference in attribute 242 (Total LBAs Read):

2325018272 - 2 316619281 = 8 398 991

Difference in attribute 01 (Read Error Rate):

200012075 - 190758838 = 9 253 237

I'd be a bit concerned about the number of High_Fly_Writes. If you can tolerate a performance penalty, you might like to use HDAT2 to enable the drive's Write_Read_Verify feature:

http://www.hdat2.com/

BTW, you can make sense of the number for Head_Flying_Hours by converting it to hexadecimal:

137043816481012 = 0x7ca4000000f4

The number of flying hours is 0xF4, ie 244.