Re: [smartmontools-support] Reading the logs

[Bruce A. <ba...@gr...>]

Tony, thanks.  I would appreciate it if you can copy the mailing list -- 
this may be of interest to other users also.

Bruce

On Fri, 15 Sep 2006, Tony Ladd wrote:

> Bruce
>
> I have made some progress-thanks to 3ware and to you; but no thanks to WDC.
> I asked for a description of the vendor-specific attributes and they
> refused. Nice. But I think I understand a little better, nevertheless. It
> seems that the spin up time is encoded via 3 16 bit integers (base10). In
> that format the lowest (I think) bits encode the spin up time, the next 16
> have something which smartmontools reports as Average but which may not be.
> In most cases its zero but for some drives it is 7 and occasionally 8. It
> would be useful to know what this means. The upper 16 bits always are zero
> (it seems). Also the spin up time does not seem to be active for the first
> few spin ups. I have 5 start ups on one drive and its still not reporting a
> spin up time.
>
> I tried using a separate 300W PS to power a single drive with a long spin up
> time. It made no difference to the SMART log so in the end I don't think
> power is the issue. If I move the drive to a different box the "Average"
> integer gets reset to zero and I get a normal spin up. I put one such drive
> back on the RAID array with the normal PS. It now seems happy, reporting a
> normal spinup time with the 2nd integer still on 0. It reports a failed spin
> up in the past but is OK (<4 s) now. I am going to try the same process with
> the other 2 "slow" drives.
>
> My best guess is that we had a couple a bad power connectors which caused
> some failed or near failed spin ups. For some reason the SMART log is not
> forgetting about this-I suspect this is signified by the second integer.
> When you change hardware it does reset the spinup time so then it seems OK.
>
> Not sure if this makes any sense-but I have learnt something about
> smartmontools.
>
> Tony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Allen [mailto:ba...@gr...]
> Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 1:09 PM
> To: Tony Ladd
> Cc: Smartmontools Mailing List
> Subject: RE: [smartmontools-support] Reading the logs
>
>
> 3ware has reasonably good technical support.  I suggest that you contact
> them about this.  Ask if your drive model is on their 'certified' list for
> the controller, and if not, ask if they could get a disk and run it
> through their certification problem.  Tell them the details of what you
> are observing.
>
> Cheers,
> 	Bruce
>
>
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Tony Ladd wrote:
>
>> Bruce
>>
>> I have the controller configured as you suggested-staggered spin up
>> and forced reallocation when verify finds an error. I tried the failed
>> drive on a plain SATA controller and it came up in about 4s which
>> seems normal-as opposed to 54 secs on the RAID array. It also passed
>> diagnostics. I then tried 4 drives on the RAID array to reduce the
>> power load-but it did not help. So I will try the oscilloscope next.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bruce Allen [mailto:ba...@gr...]
>> Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 2:47 AM
>> To: Tony Ladd
>> Subject: RE: [smartmontools-support] Reading the logs
>>
>>
>> One more note -- be sure to set up the 3ware controller so that it
>> staggers the drive spin ups.  This will reduce the power supply
>> loading.
>>
>> On Sat, 9 Sep 2006, Tony Ladd wrote:
>>
>>> Bruce
>>>
>>> Thanks for the quick and detailed reply. Its very helpful. My first
>>> thing will be to spin the disks up on a desktop box and see if the
>>> spin up times change. If so it may be power, as you suggest-then I
>>> have to debug that. I did measure the voltage across a spare power
>>> connector during spin up. It dropped from about 12.15 to 11.95 V (or
>>> something close to that). That did not seem too bad to me. I can also
>>> pull the power from 1/2 the drives and see what that does. We don't
>>> have any data on these drives right now so that makes us more
>>> flexible.
>>>
>>> Tony
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Bruce Allen [mailto:ba...@gr...]
>>> Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2006 6:07 PM
>>> To: Tony Ladd
>>> Cc: sma...@li...
>>> Subject: Re: [smartmontools-support] Reading the logs
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, 9 Sep 2006, Tony Ladd wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sorry to ask what are probably elementary questions. I have a RAID
>>>> array with a 3ware 9550-SX controller and 8 brand new WD2500YS
>>>> drives. I have since replaced the drive marked FAILING_NOW but I am
>>>> concerned about the long spin up time on several of the other
>>>> drives.
>>>
>>> As long as the normalized value of the attribute is greater than the
>>> threshold, you should not be (too) concerned.  Of course if the
>>> normalized value is decreasing with time and approaching the
>>> threshold, you should be sure to have a spare drive on hand!
>>>
>>>> 1) How do the RAW values convert to normalized values. I realize it
>>>> counts backwards but the scale makes no sense to me. For example,
>>>> why does 34091 convert to 131 and 47798 convert to 153. Also the
>>>> scale seems very nonlinear. And I don't believe the drive was taking
>>>> 54 secs to spin up.
>>>
>>> The only people who know this are the ones at Western Digital.  You
>>> can try asking them.  Try to get a 'Field Application Engineer' to
>>> talk with you.
>>>
>>>> 2) What does (Average 7) etc. signify?
>>>
>>> I think you can probably ignore this.  Some IBM/Hitachi disks were
>>> using the high-order bits of the raw value to store the average
>>> spin-up time. I wasn't aware of other vendors using the high bits.
>>> Apparently now WD is using them, but obviously not to store the
>>> average spin-up time.
>>>
>>>> 3) Are the spinup times recorded every time the system reboots?
>>>
>>> I expect they are recorded every time that the disk spins up.  I am
>>> not sure if a warm reboot will power cycle the disk or cause it to
>>> spin up. Looking at the other SMART attribute values will probably
>>> show that there is a counter you can use to track the number of
>>> spin-ups.
>>>
>>>> If I got a faster spin up on another box would it overwrite the
>>>> SMART log value.
>>>
>>> Yes
>>>
>>>> 4) Can all these drives be crap? (OK OK I know what the answer is).
>>>> But I wondered if the 3ware card could have something to do with
>>>> this. It is supposed to use a staggered spin up-can that affect the
>>>> timings in smartmontools?
>>>
>>> PROVIDED that the drives are getting enough raw power, this can't be
>>> the fault of the controller.
>>>
>>>> 5) I also wonder about the power supply. Its an old S'micro chassis
>>>> with redundant 2 X 300W power supplies. I have 10 drives (+CD &
>>>> floppy) but a dual P3 m'board. I have measured the power consumption
>>>> at the outlet during start up and maximal running (cpus and disks
>>>> all
>>>> working) and its about 260W with 1 power supply (a bit marginal I
>>>> know) but about 185W in redundant mode. Its not a cheap upgrade to
>>>> 400W redundant power so I would like to resolve this rather than just
>>>> guess at the problem.
>>>
>>> Hmmm, I think that this could be responsible.  Normally disks draw
>>> about twice their nominal operating current while spinning up.  You
>>> could measure the 5v and 12v current waveforms while the drives spin
>>> up (use a chart recorder or storage oscilliscope or A/D converter +
>>> labview) and see if the drive is getting as much current as the specs
>>> call for.
>>>
>>> Good luck!
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> 	Bruce
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>