Hi everyone,
not sure I'm posting in the right section, sorry...
I recently bought a Samsung R580 laptop equipped with a HM500JI HDD.
The original OS was Windows 7 32bit, besides I created 2 new partitions (first an ext3 for /boot and then an encrypted one for /) to install Kubuntu Lucid 64bit.
About one and a half months later, I started getting plenty of I/O errors in the Linux partitions and fsck found hundreds of MB with corrupted data (bad sectors), so I had to RMA the laptop.
Now, the laptop was returned with a (hopefully) brand new hard disk of the same model, then I upgraded Windows 7 to 64bit version and reinstalled Kubuntu with the same partition schema (this time it was Maverick Beta 64bit). I also installed a smaller Kubuntu 32bit partition inside the same encrypted LUKS container used for the 64bit version, just to compare performance vs reliability in both cases.
Unfortunately, after 2 (
TWO) weeks only, the same problem occurred on the new disk!
A fsck.ext3 scan found out several bad sectors in the 64bit Linux partition, the superblock itself turned out to be corrupted, so that the whole file system got severely damaged. Here follows an extract from the kern.log output:
Code:
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812312] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x6 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812318] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812323] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812333] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:08:c8:f3:6b/00:00:2e:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 4096 in
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812335] res 41/40:00:c8:f3:6b/00:00:2e:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812340] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.812343] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.832259] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Sep 25 14:45:26 T0P kernel: [ 2377.832276] ata1: EH complete
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863934] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x3 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863940] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863945] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863955] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:08:c8:f3:6b/00:00:2e:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 4096 in
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863957] res 41/40:00:c8:f3:6b/00:00:2e:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863962] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.863965] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883865] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883888] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883892] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883898] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883904] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883908] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883920] 2e 6b f3 c8
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883926] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883933] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 2e 6b f3 c8 00 00 08 00
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883944] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 778826696
Sep 25 14:45:28 T0P kernel: [ 2379.883979] ata1: EH complete
And this is the output of smartctl, after both
long and
short tests were performed:
Code:
~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 5.40 2010-03-16 r3077 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: SAMSUNG HM500JI
Serial Number: *************
Firmware Version: 2AC101C4
User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 6
Local Time is: Mon Sep 27 17:29:45 2010 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x02) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 118) The previous self-test completed having
the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (8640) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 144) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x003f) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 100 100 051 Pre-fail Always - 702
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0026 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0023 091 091 025 Pre-fail Always - 2950
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 288
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 252 252 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 252 252 051 Old_age Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0024 252 252 015 Old_age Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 118
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 252 252 051 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 44
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 29
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0022 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 063 052 000 Old_age Always - 37 (Lifetime Min/Max 21/48)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 47
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 099 099 000 Old_age Offline - 31
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0036 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x002a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 4
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0
225 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1849
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 60% 111 539423140
# 2 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 103 -
# 3 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 103 539423119
Note: selective self-test log revision number (0) not 1 implies that no selective self-test has ever been run
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 0
Note: revision number not 1 implies that no selective self-test has ever been run
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Completed_read_failure [60% left] (0-65535)
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
Now, as I don't consider acceptable that a HDD starts to break down in just a couple of weeks, the first obvious question is: does the test result indicate the drive is going to die shortly, or can the partial failure be neglected?
I am about to call the Samsung Support to ask again for RMA, assuming the damage is caused by some hw defect in the disk itself rather than in the controller. Anyway, as I am quite a newbie, I wish to ask the experts if there might be any other reason for those failures, to prevent it happen again on the next disk... I'm pretty sure I can exclude shocks, as I use to handle my laptop with kid gloves

The AC adapter doesn't show any evidence of electrical damage, either.
I actually noticed the HDD was damaged in both cases within the Linux 64bit partition only, though I should take into account that was the partition I've been using for most of the time. So, for example, do you have knowledge of any bugs in the Linux 64bit (current kernel version is 2.6.35) sata drivers that could eventually ruin a disk? (maybe related to encryption?)
Any advice would be highly appreciated!