[PLUG] smartmontools test accuracy?

[Dale Snell]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:33:08 -0700
Scott Garman <sgarman at zenlinux.com> wrote:

> On 04/30/2010 11:25 AM, Dale Snell wrote:
> > Is that a Seagate drive, by any chance?  I have a Seagate FreeAgent
> > Go USB drive that has similar behavior.  Nothing shows up
> > in /var/log/messages, but both  smartctl -a  and Palimpsest show
> > huge numbers for raw read error, seek, and hardware ECC correction
> > rates. Yet both programs give the drive a healthy status.  For the
> > record, here's some of the output of  smartctl -a :
> 
> It is in fact a Seagate. The story got even more interesting when I 
> noticed the following was in my smartctl -a output:
> 
> ==> WARNING: There are known problems with these drives,
> see the following Seagate web pages:
> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207963
> 
> That second URL points to a KB article mentioning a critical firmware 
> update. You might want to check Seagate's web site in case your drive 
> also has "known problems."
> 
> I have no idea if updating the firmware on the drive would make it
> work without errors...at this point there's no way I can trust it.
> It's needed for an important  build server, so I won't be taking any
> chances.
> 
> Scott
> 

Given that you are seeing errors in your syslog, I wouldn't take any
chances either.  Once it's replaced, you can fiddle with it at your
leisure, and not put your server at risk.  You may find that the drive
is okay (see Larry Brigman's post regarding SMART's output), but it
might not be, too.  In my case, the drive looks like it should be
fine.  I will check Seagate's website to see if there are any firmware
updates, though.

--Dale

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