Re: [smartmontools-support] Problem with WDC WD400BB-22HEA1

[Mario 'B. H. <Mario.Holbe@TU-Ilmenau.DE>]

Patrick K. Frei <pa...@bl...> wrote:
> Since a few days, after running a long smart test, I've a problem with my
> WDC WD400BB-22HEA1

Here is the corresponding excerpt from your smartctl output:
> # 8  Short offline       Fatal or unknown error        90%     19039         4293918720
> # 9  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     19017         -

I personally don't think your implied reasoning "after running a long
smart test, I've a problem" has a good foundation based on this data.
Between the long self-test and the next test are 22 hours, virtually a
whole day.

> All tests immediately fail (within 1-2
> seconds) right after executing e.g. "smartctl -t short /dev/sda". The error
> message is always "Fatal or unknown error". The disk health itself shows
> PASSED and the other values don't seem to be alarming.

Well, disk firmwares usually only account threshold exceeded conditions
of pre-failure attributes for the "health status" of a disk. Especially
the results of self-tests are usually not taken into account there.

> As you can see, the LBA shows a strange value of 4293918720. But the two
> partitions of my WDC go from 63 to 67119569 resp. from 67119570 to 78156224.
> So, the value 4293918720 is far out of these ranges!!

Yes, self-test routines contain more than just sector-related tests
(like head movement, circuit tests probably, whatever), and tests of
sectors that are not addressed via LBA (like firmware-, and servo
sectors). If any of those tests fails, the firmware cannot give a really
meaningful LBA_of_first_error. Maybe it's some vendor-specific error
code, maybe it's just more or less random data.

> Can you help me? Thank you very much!

Well, take the error serious, don't trust the disk anymore, backup your
data, get a new disk.
Try to stress the disk as less as possible until you backed up your
data, also don't turn it off and on if you can avoid it until you got
your data backed up.
Just handle it as if every operation you do on the disk could be the
last one you did :)


regards
   Mario
-- 
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication.
                                                     -- Homer J. Simpson