Western Digital Caviar "Black" - drive dying?

[BrianI]

Had a problem booting my ubuntu machine this morning, the /home partition triggered a drive scan due to a read error! 
fsck'ing the /home partition eventually got my machine up and running, and I've ran a SMART short self test which completed with a read error!

The results of the tests are as follows:

smartctl 5.40 2010-03-16 r3077 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen,
      smartmontools
   

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Black family
Device Model:     WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2
Serial Number:    WD-WMASY3393888
Firmware Version: 01.03B01
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Sat Mar 12 09:47:44 2011 GMT
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:  (0x85)   Offline data collection activity
               was aborted by an interrupting command from host.
               Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)   The previous self-test routine completed
               without error or no self-test has ever
               been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:        (10800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:           (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
               Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
               Suspend Offline collection upon new
               command.
               Offline surface scan supported.
               Self-test supported.
               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:     ( 127) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:     (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:           (0x303f)   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   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       763
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   162   158   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4883
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       2051
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   095   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       3678
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       2010
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       2051
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   110   102   000    Old_age   Always       -       37
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       20
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

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  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%      3678         -
# 2  Short offline       Completed: read failure       10%      3678         965173614

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    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.

Worryingly are the results highlighted in red.
I'm currently running an extended self test which should finish in 2 hours time.

Perhaps new hard drive shopping time?

[rusky]

go to WDC.com & download the LDG diagnostic tool. It can repair disks to some degree but I Would start backing up now!!

[BrianI]

go to WDC.com & download the LDG diagnostic tool. It can repair disks to some degree but I Would start backing up now!!

Unfortunately the LDG diagnostic tool are not for linux! 

Anyway the extended self test finally finished:

Code: [Select]

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       30%      3679         828536448   

Luckily the drive is still in warranty until 2013!   So I'll probably purchase a newer bigger drive, send this one back for warranty repair / replacement, and when the warranty replacement comes back I'll use it for mp3s etc and none critical pron data!   

[rusky]

There's a version of DLG that will run from a bootable USB stick & you'll need the diagnistic code if you're planning on returning it to WD direct.

[Biggsy]

By the way, how about getting more than one new drive, instead of one big one?  RAID them, or have the system on one and data on another, for greater speed or reliability.  Even treat yourself to an SSD!  (I have five drives in my new PC - slightly OTT).

Samsung make some good and reasonably priced HDDs- except one 320GB I got makes a maddening throbbing noise.

[BrianI]

I'll probably take a look online at replacement drives ~ 500GB.  I'm not a fan of 1TB+ drives as I feel that's putting all one eggs in one basket!
Much rather have a 500GB, and another internal 500GB drive for backups, then an external USB 500gb for backups of the backups.  Then a smaller drive attached to my wireless router via usb for wireless access to my muzak / videos from my ps3!

[Biggsy]

Yeah but why not two 250GB drives (or two 320GBs) rather than one 500GB?  That'll be nice egg spreading.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

That approach doubles the chances of failure.

[Biggsy]

That approach doubles the chances of failure.

Only if you do RAID 0, and even then that hardly matters if you have good frequent backups.

Or just have the OS on one drive and data on another.  This speeds things up.

[BrianI]

Gosh. 500Gb 72000 rpm "Tech Guys" branded SATA drive.

£75 in purple shirts store!

Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache, £30.98 on my favourite online computer shop!  No wonder people buy stuff online nowadays!