smartctl -l error /dev/... When to worry ?

[Hannes Mayer]

Hi Randy!

Randy Kelsoe wrote:
> Hannes Mayer wrote:
> 
>> I get this for hdb:
>>   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   
>> Always       -       646543
>> which I assume is in minutes, so that would be almost 449 days.
>> The errors occured at day 224, so that is pretty old.
> 
> 
> What brand of drive is this? Some drives keep the power_on_hours in 
> minutes.

hdb is a Samsung.

>> hdb is the slave on my IDE bus, currently with FC2.
>> hda is the master with windoze running idle 99% of the time, just 
>> mounting it
>> from FC2 from time to time.
>>
>> hdf was the slave with hdb, when hdb still had windoze on it.
>>
>> OK, so for hdf we have:
>> 5368 hours = 224 days
>>   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   237   237   000    Old_age   
>> Always       -       16981
>> 16981 hours = 707.5 days
>>
>> So these errors are pretty old too.
>>
>> But I get confused by the Power_On_Hours. Can this value be altered in 
>> some way ?
>> hdb has 449 days and hdf 707 days, but hdb is in use for a much longer 
>> time...
> 
> 
> This could be buggy firmware. I see on the smartmontools page that, for 
> example, some Maxtor drives did not update the timer when the drive was 
> in idle mode, and that caused the timer to show a lot less time than the 
> drive actually had on it.

Now it's getting even more confusing. There are 5 new errors for hdb,
3 hours after the ones I posted yesterday, so the hour count in the error
messages and the power_on_hours seem to have no relation.
On the other hand I had to power-cycle my machine again, since it hangs
when applying iptables rules every few days. So that might be the reason
for the new messages.
Anyway, I added hdb in smartd.conf and set up email notification.
I'm doing rsync backups to a remote machine on my LAN every 2 days, so
I'm sleeping pretty well :-)

Thanks a lot for your help Randy! Very much appreciated!

Cheers,
Hannes.

Error 66 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 5389 hours
   a1 15 05 01 00 00 b0 00       6.000  IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
   e3 00 00 01 00 00 b0 00      30.000  IDLE
   c4 00 01 01 00 00 b0 00      30.000  READ MULTIPLE
   c4 00 3f 01 12 00 b5 00      30.000  READ MULTIPLE
   c4 00 3f 01 0c 00 b0 00      30.000  READ MULTIPLE

Error 65 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 5389 hours
   a1 10 05 01 00 00 b0 00       7.000  IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
   e0 00 00 00 00 00 f0 00    1225.000  STANDBY IMMEDIATE
   e7 00 00 00 00 00 f0 00    1225.000  FLUSH CACHE
   ca 00 08 50 1f 03 f0 00    1223.000  WRITE DMA
   ca 00 08 70 2f 03 f0 00    1223.000  WRITE DMA

Error 64 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 5389 hours
   a1 15 05 01 00 00 b0 00       7.000  IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
   e3 00 00 01 00 00 b0 00      36.000  IDLE
   c4 00 01 01 00 00 b0 00      36.000  READ MULTIPLE
   c4 00 3f 01 12 00 b5 00      35.000  READ MULTIPLE
   c4 00 3f 01 0c 00 b0 00      35.000  READ MULTIPLE

Error 63 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 5389 hours
   a1 11 05 01 00 00 b0 00       7.000  IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
   e3 00 00 00 aa 00 b0 00      26.000  IDLE
   c6 00 10 00 00 00 bc 00       7.000  SET MULTIPLE MODE
   91 00 3f 00 00 00 bf 00       7.000  INITIALIZE DEVICE PARAMETERS [OBS-6]
   10 00 00 00 00 00 b0 00       7.000  RECALIBRATE [OBS-4]

Error 62 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 5389 hours
   b0 d5 01 01 4f c2 f0 00    2485.000  SMART READ LOG
   b0 d1 01 01 4f c2 f0 00    2485.000  SMART READ ATTRIBUTE THRESHOLDS [OBS-4]
   b0 d0 01 00 4f c2 f0 00    2485.000  SMART READ DATA
   b0 da 00 00 4f c2 10 00    2485.000  SMART RETURN STATUS
   b0 da 00 00 4f c2 f0 00    2485.000  SMART RETURN STATUS