[SUMMARY] Disk errors

From: <mortimer_at_physics.uq.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 10:18:15 +1000

Hi DU Admins

This was my question:

   Our AlphaStation 200 4/233 registered 9 CAM SCSI bad block errors
   from the same disk in one day. This disk is used for /usr/local
   and secondary swap. I've included two error log entries below.

   Does this indicate the disk is going bad? Is there some other
   diagnostic I can run to check the disk's condition?

   I checked the archives and found several questions along the
   same lines as this but no summaries.

Thanks to alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com for his very quick initial
reply and then continued help with followup replies.

Alan's reply was:

        I'd take the errors as a warning. If you can take it out
        of service by moving the data elsewhere, I would. Then
        I'd use diskx or something to throughly exercise the disk
        to see if it has more errors. Correctable errors will
        either simply get back the ECC corrected data or cause the
        disk to revector the marginal block to a good one. A bunch
        of them in the same area, might be a bad sign.

        If you can't remove the disk from service, then find a quiet
        time and run a scanning pass with scu(8). If that finds other
        bad or marginal blocks, replacing it is probably the safest
        thing.

I can't easily take the disk out of service so with Alan's further
help I ran:

       # scu -f /dev/rrz3c
       scu> verify media

This didn't show any errors.

For the time being I'll just monitor the error log and keep an
eye out for any more bad block errors from this disk.


Ian

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ Ian Mortimer _/
_/ mortimer_at_physics.uq.edu.au ,-_|\ Department of Physics _/
_/ Tel: +61 7 3365 3436 / *\ University of Queensland _/
_/ Fax: +61 7 3365 1242 \_,-._/ St. Lucia, Brisbane _/
_/ v Queensland, Australia 4072 _/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed are my own.
Received on Tue Oct 14 1997 - 02:27:20 NZDT

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