Re: [smartmontools-support] bad sectors with Seagate Momentus 5400.6 series

[Xavier C. <cha...@gm...>]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 7:23 AM, Franc Zabkar <fz...@in...> wrote:
> I would think that power fluctuations could cause a write operation
> to be inhibited mid-stream. This would result in an unreadable sector
> which would then be marked as pending reallocation. However, on the
> next write, the sector would be retested and returned to service. The
> same could occur if the drive's shock sensor detects an excessive vibration.
>
> I would try to have both drives replaced under warranty, especially
> if the bad sector count increases regularly. As for your question
> regarding the number of allowable bad sectors, if you examine the
> SMART report, you will see that one drive's normalised attribute is
> already at 84, which means it has lost 16 points after developing 343
> defects. It has another 48 points to go before it hits the threshold
> of 36. This means that SMART allows for a total of around 343 / 16 x
> 64 = 1372 reallocations before the drive is deemed to have failed.
>
> 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   084   084   036  343
>
> A standard USB port is current limited to 500mA. A Seagate
> ST9500325AS drive requires about 850mA during spinup, and about 400mA
> thereafter (see page 11 of manual, page 17 of PDF). A Y-cable is
> therefore sometimes necessary to pick up power from two USB ports. If
> you need to use a USB hub, an externally powered one would be
> preferred to a port powered type.
>
> Momentus 5400.6 SATA Product Manual, Rev. E:
> http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/5400.6%20(Wyatt)/100528359e.pdf
>
> I believe your Firmware Version, 0002BSM1, is responsible for an
> excessive number of load/unload cycles. The associated clicking
> annoys many people. There is a Dell firmware update that fixes this
> behaviour, but it can't be applied via USB.
>
> -Franc Zabkar
>
>

I saw Marti's answer, but I somehow managed to miss the very
informative one from Franc.
Thanks a lot to both of you for all these very interesting details.

I actually could get both drivers replaced easily by contacting
directly the hardware vendors (seagate and iomega) rather than the
resellers.
For seagate, I just mentioned that Seatools reported the drive as
failing, and they accepted the replacement right away.
For iomega, I showed the number of bad sectors and reallocated
sectors, and that was enough.

In both cases it went quite fast, and I would have received the two
drives 3 weeks ago if I was there to receive them :)

The seagate drive came with a single usb cable.
The interesting part is that I cannot see anything about the seagate
drive, smartctl just fails with :

[xavier@xps-m1530 ~]$ smartctl -a -d scsi /dev/sdb
smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Device: Seagate  Portable         Version: 0130
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or
more '-T permissive' options.

[xavier@xps-m1530 ~]$ smartctl -a -d scsi /dev/sdb -T permissive
smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Device: Seagate  Portable         Version: 0130
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page

Error Counter logging not supported
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
Device does not support Self Test logging

So I have no idea what device model / firmware version it is.

The Iomega came with no cable, I probably did the mistake to return
the original Y one.
On the disk, there is the following message :
"This is a re-manufactured product. some of the components may have
been replaced and/or repaired. This Product meets Iomega's quality
Assurance standards."

And that device reports it does not support SMART :

[xavier@xps-m1530 ~]$ smartctl -a -d scsi /dev/sdb
smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Device: ST950032 5AS              Version:
Serial number: 801130168383
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Mon Apr 12 13:26:14 2010 CEST
Device does not support SMART

Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging


So at least I can see that the iomega is still the same device model.

The only status information I can see from both disks is SMART Health Status: OK
Hopefully this time we won't have any data corruption/loss. I already
told the user to completely stop using a hub for these usb powered
drives.