From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jul 22 22:10:01 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 642CB16A417; Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:10:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sos@deepcore.dk) Received: from spider.deepcore.dk (cpe.atm2-0-70484.0x50a6c9a6.abnxx16.customer.tele.dk [80.166.201.166]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EBC6513C459; Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:10:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sos@deepcore.dk) Received: from [194.192.25.137] (ws.deepcore.dk [194.192.25.137]) by spider.deepcore.dk (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l6MM9xJK048790; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:09:59 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from sos@deepcore.dk) Message-ID: <46A3D5B8.8070208@deepcore.dk> Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:10:00 +0200 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?S=F8ren_Schmidt?= User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Macintosh/20070509) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bruce M Simpson References: <46A35EE6.6030902@incunabulum.net> In-Reply-To: <46A35EE6.6030902@incunabulum.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: FreeBSD stable , =?ISO-8859-1?Q?S=F8ren_?=, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Schmidt?= Subject: Re: Help! My laptop drive may be dying. X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:10:01 -0000 Bruce M Simpson wrote: > Hi, > > My laptop drive might be dying. It is a Samsung MP0804H which I have=20 > used for around 28 months without issue. > > Every now and then it will click and sound as though it is thermally=20 > recalibrating itself. > > I ran SMART diagnostics from smartmontools, and Samsung's own diag=20 > tools which all report the drive is OK (a full captive surface test).=20 > I see nothing untoward in the SMART info pages. Well, sounds like the drive is indeed dying, recalibrating noises like=20 that is a bad sign, its most likely having real trouble reading certain=20 areas of the medium. If your SMART output tells anything about read retries or number of=20 remaps that could be an indicator of upcoming problems, however not all=20 drives has that info in the SMART pages. In the real world scenario SMART can only tell you about the problem=20 when the drive has given up on the data, there is almost newer any real=20 prewarns to failure. > > Whilst Windows is able to tolerate the retrying of ATA commands which=20 > this click appears to be inducing, FreeBSD can easily get sick and=20 > just hang, which majorly gets in the way of real work. Depends on whats happening, you could try to up the timeout in=20 ata-disk.c and see if it survives the errors that way, to at least try=20 to save the data before its too late. -S=F8ren