[H-GEN] Disk array about to croak?

[Benjamin Fowler]

Hi All,

> On 17/09/2014 8:16 PM, Benjamin Fowler wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I have a little HP Mediasmart server which I've redone with Debian. It runs a 4-drive SATA disk array, which runs ext4 over LVM over MD/softraid (raid 5). It's a neat little machine, which has been going quite nicely for hosting all my media and network backups.
>
> Until now, that is. I've been noticing the following sort of output in my daily logwatch emails:
>

[snip]

On 17 September 2014 12:22, Snowy Angelique Maslov <snowy at snowy.org> wrote:
>
> Certainly not a healthy disk Ben - I'd do a smartctl test on it to be sure but I would bet money on it that the drive is on its way out.   To run a quick test:
>
> # smartctl --test=short /dev/sda
>
> That should take about a minute. And then run:
>
> # smartctl -a /dev/sda
>

Aaaaaand as luck would have it:

Quick S.M.A.R.T tests pass on all drives, but it looks like the first
drive (the worst one, as it turns out), is getting the death rattles.

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   115   103   000    Old_age
Always       -       35
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       17
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       10
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      -       67


This is annoying, since this thing is an HP MediaSmart, and I never
had any luck getting into the BIOS with the debug header (no VGA
port), so there's no way to write a boot sector to all drives and have
the system come up if the first drive fails....

So now, I have to figure out what capabilities, MD, LVM and ext4 give
me, to let me figure out how much damage this is doing, and whether or
not it's localized...

(Time to simply throw out the MediaSmart, and replace it with a
beefier Avoton machine with ECC RAM, and run ZFS?)

Cheers, Ben.