[gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Dale]

Howdy,

I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100. 
Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
hard drive light on the case. 

Also, I do not know WHICH drive is making this noise yet.  I have four
in there running and they are physically mounted close together.  I'm
not sure I would know which one it is even if I take the side off the
case.  I just know that it is making this odd noise.  Here is some info
from hdparm:


root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd:

 Model=ST3000DM001-1ER166, FwRev=CC25, SerialNo=Z501R198
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
 AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7

 * signifies the current active mode

root@fireball / #
 

That's the new drive up above.  Old drive that is basically the same
drive, different batch I would assume, is below.


root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:

 Model=ST3000DM001-1CH166, FwRev=CC29, SerialNo=W1F4C31Q
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
 AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7

 * signifies the current active mode

root@fireball / #


The last SMART test I ran showed no problems but I have a fresh one
running as I type on all drives.  Will update if it shows anything. 

Thoughts? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Ian Bloss]

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Is it a seagate?

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 19:02 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100.
> Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
> basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
> or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
> reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
> there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
> drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
> sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
> nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
> hard drive light on the case.
>
> Also, I do not know WHICH drive is making this noise yet.  I have four
> in there running and they are physically mounted close together.  I'm
> not sure I would know which one it is even if I take the side off the
> case.  I just know that it is making this odd noise.  Here is some info
> from hdparm:
>
>
> root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdd
>
> /dev/sdd:
>
>  Model=ST3000DM001-1ER166, FwRev=CC25, SerialNo=Z501R198
>  Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
>  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
>  BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
>  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
>  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
>  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
>  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
>  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
>  AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
>  Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7
>
>  * signifies the current active mode
>
> root@fireball / #
>
>
> That's the new drive up above.  Old drive that is basically the same
> drive, different batch I would assume, is below.
>
>
> root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdc
>
> /dev/sdc:
>
>  Model=ST3000DM001-1CH166, FwRev=CC29, SerialNo=W1F4C31Q
>  Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
>  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
>  BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
>  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
>  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
>  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
>  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
>  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
>  AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
>  Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7
>
>  * signifies the current active mode
>
> root@fireball / #
>
>
> The last SMART test I ran showed no problems but I have a fresh one
> running as I type on all drives.  Will update if it shows anything.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Dale]

Ian Bloss wrote:
>
> Is it a seagate?
>
>

It would be a Seagate, yes.  From SMART:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)
Device Model:     ST3000DM001-1ER166
 

You know some history on this thing?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Bill Kenworthy]

On 19/12/15 08:01, Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100. 
> Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
> basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
> or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
> reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
> there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
> drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
> sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
> nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
> hard drive light on the case. 
> 
> Also, I do not know WHICH drive is making this noise yet.  I have four
> in there running and they are physically mounted close together.  I'm
> not sure I would know which one it is even if I take the side off the
> case.  I just know that it is making this odd noise.  Here is some info
> from hdparm:
> 
> 
> root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdd
> 
> /dev/sdd:
> 
>  Model=ST3000DM001-1ER166, FwRev=CC25, SerialNo=Z501R198
>  Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
>  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
>  BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
>  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
>  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
>  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
>  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
>  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
>  AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
>  Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7
> 
>  * signifies the current active mode
> 
> root@fireball / #
>  
> 
> That's the new drive up above.  Old drive that is basically the same
> drive, different batch I would assume, is below.
> 
> 
> root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdc
> 
> /dev/sdc:
> 
>  Model=ST3000DM001-1CH166, FwRev=CC29, SerialNo=W1F4C31Q
>  Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
>  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
>  BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
>  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
>  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
>  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
>  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
>  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
>  AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
>  Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7
> 
>  * signifies the current active mode
> 
> root@fireball / #
> 
> 
> The last SMART test I ran showed no problems but I have a fresh one
> running as I type on all drives.  Will update if it shows anything. 
> 
> Thoughts? 
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 
> 
> 

Mechanics trick - place a largish screwdriver end on each hard drive
case in turn and the handle end to your ear.  You can hear difference in
sound quite clearly.

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Ian Bloss]

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I've had more Seagates die over time than any other brand, I would
recommend getting your money back asap and finding another brand.

I work IT at a school and we no longer purchase seagate drives for their
failure rate.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 19:41 Bill Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:

> On 19/12/15 08:01, Dale wrote:
> > Howdy,
> >
> > I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100.
> > Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
> > basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
> > or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
> > reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
> > there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
> > drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
> > sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
> > nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
> > hard drive light on the case.
> >
> > Also, I do not know WHICH drive is making this noise yet.  I have four
> > in there running and they are physically mounted close together.  I'm
> > not sure I would know which one it is even if I take the side off the
> > case.  I just know that it is making this odd noise.  Here is some info
> > from hdparm:
> >
> >
> > root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdd
> >
> > /dev/sdd:
> >
> >  Model=ST3000DM001-1ER166, FwRev=CC25, SerialNo=Z501R198
> >  Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
> >  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
> >  BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
> >  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
> >  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
> >  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
> >  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
> >  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
> >  AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
> >  Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7
> >
> >  * signifies the current active mode
> >
> > root@fireball / #
> >
> >
> > That's the new drive up above.  Old drive that is basically the same
> > drive, different batch I would assume, is below.
> >
> >
> > root@fireball / # hdparm -i /dev/sdc
> >
> > /dev/sdc:
> >
> >  Model=ST3000DM001-1CH166, FwRev=CC29, SerialNo=W1F4C31Q
> >  Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
> >  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
> >  BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
> >  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=5860533168
> >  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
> >  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
> >  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
> >  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
> >  AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
> >  Drive conforms to: Reserved:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7
> >
> >  * signifies the current active mode
> >
> > root@fireball / #
> >
> >
> > The last SMART test I ran showed no problems but I have a fresh one
> > running as I type on all drives.  Will update if it shows anything.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Dale
> >
> > :-)  :-)
> >
> >
>
> Mechanics trick - place a largish screwdriver end on each hard drive
> case in turn and the handle end to your ear.  You can hear difference in
> sound quite clearly.
>
> BillK
>
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[wabenbau]

Ian Bloss <ianlinkcd@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've had more Seagates die over time than any other brand, I would
> recommend getting your money back asap and finding another brand.
> 
> I work IT at a school and we no longer purchase seagate drives for
> their failure rate.

A friend of mine is using Seagate ES drives since many years in his 
servers. He replaces all his drives after the five years warranty time
is up and as far as I can remember he told me, that he never had a 
failure with all of his drives. He gave me two of his old drives and 
I used them for some years in a RAID-1 array in one of my machines 
till I replaced them with SSDs recently. They are still ok. The only 
bad  thing about these drives is their high noise level. Server drives
are usually located in a server room and not in an office and so they 
are not designed to be silent. :-)

--
Regards
wabe

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Ian Bloss]

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When I get a chance next time I'm at work I'll attach a link to the piles
of dead seagates I've been collecting for target practice.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 22:09  <wabenbau@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ian Bloss <ianlinkcd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I've had more Seagates die over time than any other brand, I would
> > recommend getting your money back asap and finding another brand.
> >
> > I work IT at a school and we no longer purchase seagate drives for
> > their failure rate.
>
> A friend of mine is using Seagate ES drives since many years in his
> servers. He replaces all his drives after the five years warranty time
> is up and as far as I can remember he told me, that he never had a
> failure with all of his drives. He gave me two of his old drives and
> I used them for some years in a RAID-1 array in one of my machines
> till I replaced them with SSDs recently. They are still ok. The only
> bad  thing about these drives is their high noise level. Server drives
> are usually located in a server room and not in an office and so they
> are not designed to be silent. :-)
>
> --
> Regards
> wabe
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Dale]

Bill Kenworthy wrote:
> On 19/12/15 08:01, Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100. 
>> Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
>> basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
>> or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
>> reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
>> there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
>> drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
>> sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
>> nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
>> hard drive light on the case. 
>>
>> <<<< SNIP >>>>
>> The last SMART test I ran showed no problems but I have a fresh one
>> running as I type on all drives.  Will update if it shows anything. 
>>
>> Thoughts? 
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
>>
>>
> Mechanics trick - place a largish screwdriver end on each hard drive
> case in turn and the handle end to your ear.  You can hear difference in
> sound quite clearly.
>
> BillK
>
>
>
>

That would likely work.  I've also used a water hose to do that on
cars.  I'm not sure how well that will work since the drives are only
like a inch apart.  With the screwdriver I might even be able to feel
it.  It's not very loud but I can hear it.  One reason I can hear it so
well, the fans on my case are very quiet.  In a quiet room, I can't hear
the fans.  I can hear this drive noise even with the TV at a reasonable
level.  With no TV, I can hear it pretty well.  My water hose trick
wouldn't likely work but your screwdriver idea might work in more than
one way. 

I also found this after the reply from Ian.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/ 

No wonder they had it on sale.  Heck, why didn't they just say it was a
good door stop instead of a hard drive??? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[covici]

Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Bill Kenworthy wrote:
> > On 19/12/15 08:01, Dale wrote:
> >> Howdy,
> >>
> >> I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100. 
> >> Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
> >> basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
> >> or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
> >> reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
> >> there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
> >> drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
> >> sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
> >> nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
> >> hard drive light on the case. 
> >>
> >> <<<< SNIP >>>>
> >> The last SMART test I ran showed no problems but I have a fresh one
> >> running as I type on all drives.  Will update if it shows anything. 
> >>
> >> Thoughts? 
> >>
> >> Dale
> >>
> >> :-)  :-) 
> >>
> >>
> > Mechanics trick - place a largish screwdriver end on each hard drive
> > case in turn and the handle end to your ear.  You can hear difference in
> > sound quite clearly.
> >
> > BillK
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> That would likely work.  I've also used a water hose to do that on
> cars.  I'm not sure how well that will work since the drives are only
> like a inch apart.  With the screwdriver I might even be able to feel
> it.  It's not very loud but I can hear it.  One reason I can hear it so
> well, the fans on my case are very quiet.  In a quiet room, I can't hear
> the fans.  I can hear this drive noise even with the TV at a reasonable
> level.  With no TV, I can hear it pretty well.  My water hose trick
> wouldn't likely work but your screwdriver idea might work in more than
> one way. 
> 
> I also found this after the reply from Ian.
> 
> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/ 
> 
> No wonder they had it on sale.  Heck, why didn't they just say it was a
> good door stop instead of a hard drive??? 

I always try to get something a bit better than consumer drives, at
least the equivalent of Western Digital Red which now has a longer
warranty -- notice that a lot of drives have only ONE year warranties
now?  Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Dale]

covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> That would likely work.  I've also used a water hose to do that on
>> cars.  I'm not sure how well that will work since the drives are only
>> like a inch apart.  With the screwdriver I might even be able to feel
>> it.  It's not very loud but I can hear it.  One reason I can hear it so
>> well, the fans on my case are very quiet.  In a quiet room, I can't hear
>> the fans.  I can hear this drive noise even with the TV at a reasonable
>> level.  With no TV, I can hear it pretty well.  My water hose trick
>> wouldn't likely work but your screwdriver idea might work in more than
>> one way. 
>>
>> I also found this after the reply from Ian.
>>
>> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/ 
>>
>> No wonder they had it on sale.  Heck, why didn't they just say it was a
>> good door stop instead of a hard drive??? 
> I always try to get something a bit better than consumer drives, at
> least the equivalent of Western Digital Red which now has a longer
> warranty -- notice that a lot of drives have only ONE year warranties
> now?  Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?
>


I'm feeling something but I don't think warm and fuzzy would be it.  :-@@ 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 7:49 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I also found this after the reply from Ian.
>
> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/
>
> No wonder they had it on sale.  Heck, why didn't they just say it was a
> good door stop instead of a hard drive???
>

Yeah, the only reason I'd want to use that model drive is if I had a
raid5 composed of entirely different drives and for some reason the
discount on the Seagate 3TB drive let me bump it up to a raid6 (and to
be sure I'd never put more than one of those in an array).  It is
basically a doorstop.

I had two of those go in the span of a year.  One was replaced under
warranty.  The next was the warranty replacement.  That one was no
longer under warranty, but after a scathing Amazon review Seagate
actually commented on the review asking me to contact them about a
replacement.  I didn't bother - I really was tired of swapping out
drives at that pace and didn't consider the considerably-higher risk
of a double failure worth it.

i'd have to check - I think I picked a 4TB Seagate NAS drive to replace it.

Somebody suggested not buying Seagate.  The thing is, EVERY
manufacturer has had drives like these.  Well, the Hitachi drives
Backblaze goes on about would be an exception, but they're
SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive and I don't think it is worth the premium
in a RAID.  For a single-drive system I'd strongly consider them.  I
think I heard they were bought out at some point, so we'll see if
their reputation holds.

And that's the thing with brand reputations.  These days MBAs milk
reputations.  Some finance guy realizes that people will buy this
year's drives based on last year's reputation and cuts some corners
and collects a huge bonus.  Three years later everybody is dealing
with drive failures.  Every vendor does it.  That one Seagate model
was about the worst I've personally seen, but who knows what model is
being sold today that in three years will turn out to be just as bad,
and it could come from any of the vendors.

I do try to look at the Backblaze stats for what they're worth, but I
think the general advice applies well.  Make sure you have an
appropriate level of redundancy and backup strategy.  Make sure to mix
models of drives in your RAIDs.  The whole point of a RAID is to keep
the price down by increasing your tolerance of failures.

And the whole NAS drive firmware thing really bugs me because they
charge a premium for a few bits in flash memory that should be
user-configurable anyway.  Some of those drives have better vibration
resistance, which bugs me less.  However, the bottom line is that they
probably will improve your RAID performance in the event of a failure,
and they probably do tend to cut the corners less on them.  But who
knows, maybe the drive that fails next year will be the super-premium
edition.

All of this goes to one of my drivers for using btrfs (and in this
regard zfs will do just as well).  The checksumming means that I'm not
really trusting the drive or its firmware at all, and I scrub my
arrays weekly.

Sorry you ended up with a bad drive...  That model IS considerably
cheaper than most of the others...

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[covici]

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 7:49 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I also found this after the reply from Ian.
> >
> > https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/
> >
> > No wonder they had it on sale.  Heck, why didn't they just say it was a
> > good door stop instead of a hard drive???
> >
> 
> Yeah, the only reason I'd want to use that model drive is if I had a
> raid5 composed of entirely different drives and for some reason the
> discount on the Seagate 3TB drive let me bump it up to a raid6 (and to
> be sure I'd never put more than one of those in an array).  It is
> basically a doorstop.
> 
> I had two of those go in the span of a year.  One was replaced under
> warranty.  The next was the warranty replacement.  That one was no
> longer under warranty, but after a scathing Amazon review Seagate
> actually commented on the review asking me to contact them about a
> replacement.  I didn't bother - I really was tired of swapping out
> drives at that pace and didn't consider the considerably-higher risk
> of a double failure worth it.
> 
> i'd have to check - I think I picked a 4TB Seagate NAS drive to replace it.
> 
> Somebody suggested not buying Seagate.  The thing is, EVERY
> manufacturer has had drives like these.  Well, the Hitachi drives
> Backblaze goes on about would be an exception, but they're
> SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive and I don't think it is worth the premium
> in a RAID.  For a single-drive system I'd strongly consider them.  I
> think I heard they were bought out at some point, so we'll see if
> their reputation holds.
> 
> And that's the thing with brand reputations.  These days MBAs milk
> reputations.  Some finance guy realizes that people will buy this
> year's drives based on last year's reputation and cuts some corners
> and collects a huge bonus.  Three years later everybody is dealing
> with drive failures.  Every vendor does it.  That one Seagate model
> was about the worst I've personally seen, but who knows what model is
> being sold today that in three years will turn out to be just as bad,
> and it could come from any of the vendors.
> 
> I do try to look at the Backblaze stats for what they're worth, but I
> think the general advice applies well.  Make sure you have an
> appropriate level of redundancy and backup strategy.  Make sure to mix
> models of drives in your RAIDs.  The whole point of a RAID is to keep
> the price down by increasing your tolerance of failures.
> 
> And the whole NAS drive firmware thing really bugs me because they
> charge a premium for a few bits in flash memory that should be
> user-configurable anyway.  Some of those drives have better vibration
> resistance, which bugs me less.  However, the bottom line is that they
> probably will improve your RAID performance in the event of a failure,
> and they probably do tend to cut the corners less on them.  But who
> knows, maybe the drive that fails next year will be the super-premium
> edition.
> 
> All of this goes to one of my drivers for using btrfs (and in this
> regard zfs will do just as well).  The checksumming means that I'm not
> really trusting the drive or its firmware at all, and I scrub my
> arrays weekly.
> 
> Sorry you ended up with a bad drive...  That model IS considerably
> cheaper than most of the others...

I was never able to get either zfs or btrfs to work correctly, zfs was
very vulnerable -- I forgot to export a zfs on a usb drive and got an
enless loop of processes untill I rebooted.  Btrfs never did work for
me, I created a pool,  copied my root file system, usr and var into
ssubvolumes, and copied my files, but when I would boot into it,
everything was messed up, processes thought files were missing, very
strange.  So, how did you set up either one of those -- I would love to
use it because I have ssds and I don't want to rely on their firmware
either.


-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 2:56 AM,  <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
>
> I was never able to get either zfs or btrfs to work correctly, zfs was
> very vulnerable -- I forgot to export a zfs on a usb drive and got an
> enless loop of processes untill I rebooted.  Btrfs never did work for
> me, I created a pool,  copied my root file system, usr and var into
> ssubvolumes, and copied my files, but when I would boot into it,
> everything was messed up, processes thought files were missing, very
> strange.  So, how did you set up either one of those -- I would love to
> use it because I have ssds and I don't want to rely on their firmware
> either.

Well, I don't have much personal experience with zfs, but the ZFS on
Linux lead is a Gentoo dev, so you're in good company there all the
same.  I personally use btrfs.

The obvious caveat is that it is still relatively experimental, and
raid5/6 is VERY experimental.  I plan to convert to raid5/6 at a
future date but am staying away from it for now (and a selling point
of btrfs is that reshaping in-place is easy).

I can't really vouch for what went wrong with your migration.  It
could be anything from a failure to preserve all your file attributes
to something with btrfs itself or your bootloader config/etc.  It
isn't hard to do a new install in btrfs though, and you can always
mess with it in a VM, or even mess with doing migrations in a VM.

My btrfs install notes are at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJlJyYLTZScta9a81xgKOIBjYsG3_VfxxmUSxG23Uxg/edit?usp=sharing
(I still plan to merge this stuff into the handbook.  Maybe a good
holiday project...  Oh, and if it isn't already obvious anybody can
add comments and half this list seems to have already done so.)

Oh, for a boot image I tend to use system rescue CD since it has all
the necessary userspace and is gentoo-based (and you can always emerge
--sync and install whatever you need inside it).  I tend to use the
alternate kernel since it is newer, and with btrfs newer tends to be
better.  In production I'm currently on 3.18 eyeing an upgrade to 4.1.
I tend to stay on the latest longterm, but not when they are first
declared as longterm.  That seems to be the sweet spot for getting
btrfs features and bugfixes, but not getting as many of the
regressions.  I use grub2/dracut to boot, and that is in my guide.

If you follow those notes for a stage3 install it should "just work."
If you want to mess around I suggest just doing a vanilla install on a
VM once to validate that it works for you and then tweak from a
position of strength.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[covici]

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 2:56 AM,  <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
> >
> > I was never able to get either zfs or btrfs to work correctly, zfs was
> > very vulnerable -- I forgot to export a zfs on a usb drive and got an
> > enless loop of processes untill I rebooted.  Btrfs never did work for
> > me, I created a pool,  copied my root file system, usr and var into
> > ssubvolumes, and copied my files, but when I would boot into it,
> > everything was messed up, processes thought files were missing, very
> > strange.  So, how did you set up either one of those -- I would love to
> > use it because I have ssds and I don't want to rely on their firmware
> > either.
> 
> Well, I don't have much personal experience with zfs, but the ZFS on
> Linux lead is a Gentoo dev, so you're in good company there all the
> same.  I personally use btrfs.
> 
> The obvious caveat is that it is still relatively experimental, and
> raid5/6 is VERY experimental.  I plan to convert to raid5/6 at a
> future date but am staying away from it for now (and a selling point
> of btrfs is that reshaping in-place is easy).
> 
> I can't really vouch for what went wrong with your migration.  It
> could be anything from a failure to preserve all your file attributes
> to something with btrfs itself or your bootloader config/etc.  It
> isn't hard to do a new install in btrfs though, and you can always
> mess with it in a VM, or even mess with doing migrations in a VM.
> 
> My btrfs install notes are at:
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJlJyYLTZScta9a81xgKOIBjYsG3_VfxxmUSxG23Uxg/edit?usp=sharing
> (I still plan to merge this stuff into the handbook.  Maybe a good
> holiday project...  Oh, and if it isn't already obvious anybody can
> add comments and half this list seems to have already done so.)
> 
> Oh, for a boot image I tend to use system rescue CD since it has all
> the necessary userspace and is gentoo-based (and you can always emerge
> --sync and install whatever you need inside it).  I tend to use the
> alternate kernel since it is newer, and with btrfs newer tends to be
> better.  In production I'm currently on 3.18 eyeing an upgrade to 4.1.
> I tend to stay on the latest longterm, but not when they are first
> declared as longterm.  That seems to be the sweet spot for getting
> btrfs features and bugfixes, but not getting as many of the
> regressions.  I use grub2/dracut to boot, and that is in my guide.
> 
> If you follow those notes for a stage3 install it should "just work."
> If you want to mess around I suggest just doing a vanilla install on a
> VM once to validate that it works for you and then tweak from a
> position of strength.

Thanks.  I will check out your notes and figure out something -- it was
definitely strange.  I have a vm I can play with -- its older, but I can
bring it up to date and see what happens.

Thanks again.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

[gentoo-user] btrfs strategies (wasHard drive noise)

[covici]

covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 2:56 AM,  <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I was never able to get either zfs or btrfs to work correctly, zfs was
> > > very vulnerable -- I forgot to export a zfs on a usb drive and got an
> > > enless loop of processes untill I rebooted.  Btrfs never did work for
> > > me, I created a pool,  copied my root file system, usr and var into
> > > ssubvolumes, and copied my files, but when I would boot into it,
> > > everything was messed up, processes thought files were missing, very
> > > strange.  So, how did you set up either one of those -- I would love to
> > > use it because I have ssds and I don't want to rely on their firmware
> > > either.
> > 
> > Well, I don't have much personal experience with zfs, but the ZFS on
> > Linux lead is a Gentoo dev, so you're in good company there all the
> > same.  I personally use btrfs.
> > 
> > The obvious caveat is that it is still relatively experimental, and
> > raid5/6 is VERY experimental.  I plan to convert to raid5/6 at a
> > future date but am staying away from it for now (and a selling point
> > of btrfs is that reshaping in-place is easy).
> > 
> > I can't really vouch for what went wrong with your migration.  It
> > could be anything from a failure to preserve all your file attributes
> > to something with btrfs itself or your bootloader config/etc.  It
> > isn't hard to do a new install in btrfs though, and you can always
> > mess with it in a VM, or even mess with doing migrations in a VM.
> > 
> > My btrfs install notes are at:
> > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJlJyYLTZScta9a81xgKOIBjYsG3_VfxxmUSxG23Uxg/edit?usp=sharing
> > (I still plan to merge this stuff into the handbook.  Maybe a good
> > holiday project...  Oh, and if it isn't already obvious anybody can
> > add comments and half this list seems to have already done so.)
> > 
> > Oh, for a boot image I tend to use system rescue CD since it has all
> > the necessary userspace and is gentoo-based (and you can always emerge
> > --sync and install whatever you need inside it).  I tend to use the
> > alternate kernel since it is newer, and with btrfs newer tends to be
> > better.  In production I'm currently on 3.18 eyeing an upgrade to 4.1.
> > I tend to stay on the latest longterm, but not when they are first
> > declared as longterm.  That seems to be the sweet spot for getting
> > btrfs features and bugfixes, but not getting as many of the
> > regressions.  I use grub2/dracut to boot, and that is in my guide.
> > 
> > If you follow those notes for a stage3 install it should "just work."
> > If you want to mess around I suggest just doing a vanilla install on a
> > VM once to validate that it works for you and then tweak from a
> > position of strength.
> 
> Thanks.  I will check out your notes and figure out something -- it was
> definitely strange.  I have a vm I can play with -- its older, but I can
> bring it up to date and see what happens.
> 
> Thanks again.

One thing I was thinking of -- since I like separate file systems for
each major directory i.e. separate /usr, /var, /home, /tmp and even
/var/tmp/portage, I thought I would make btrfs file systems using lvm.
The advantage is that I use lvm already, so this would be easy for me to
do and safer in case one of them goes south and easier to control  space
allocation.  The only disadvantage I can see is if its a performance
hit, does anyone have any knowledge of that is true?

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs strategies (wasHard drive noise)

[J. Roeleveld]

On Sunday, December 20, 2015 02:15:33 AM covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> > Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 2:56 AM,  <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
> > > > I was never able to get either zfs or btrfs to work correctly, zfs was
> > > > very vulnerable -- I forgot to export a zfs on a usb drive and got an
> > > > enless loop of processes untill I rebooted.  Btrfs never did work for
> > > > me, I created a pool,  copied my root file system, usr and var into
> > > > ssubvolumes, and copied my files, but when I would boot into it,
> > > > everything was messed up, processes thought files were missing, very
> > > > strange.  So, how did you set up either one of those -- I would love
> > > > to
> > > > use it because I have ssds and I don't want to rely on their firmware
> > > > either.
> > > 
> > > Well, I don't have much personal experience with zfs, but the ZFS on
> > > Linux lead is a Gentoo dev, so you're in good company there all the
> > > same.  I personally use btrfs.
> > > 
> > > The obvious caveat is that it is still relatively experimental, and
> > > raid5/6 is VERY experimental.  I plan to convert to raid5/6 at a
> > > future date but am staying away from it for now (and a selling point
> > > of btrfs is that reshaping in-place is easy).
> > > 
> > > I can't really vouch for what went wrong with your migration.  It
> > > could be anything from a failure to preserve all your file attributes
> > > to something with btrfs itself or your bootloader config/etc.  It
> > > isn't hard to do a new install in btrfs though, and you can always
> > > mess with it in a VM, or even mess with doing migrations in a VM.
> > > 
> > > My btrfs install notes are at:
> > > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJlJyYLTZScta9a81xgKOIBjYsG3_VfxxmUS
> > > xG23Uxg/edit?usp=sharing (I still plan to merge this stuff into the
> > > handbook.  Maybe a good holiday project...  Oh, and if it isn't already
> > > obvious anybody can add comments and half this list seems to have
> > > already done so.)
> > > 
> > > Oh, for a boot image I tend to use system rescue CD since it has all
> > > the necessary userspace and is gentoo-based (and you can always emerge
> > > --sync and install whatever you need inside it).  I tend to use the
> > > alternate kernel since it is newer, and with btrfs newer tends to be
> > > better.  In production I'm currently on 3.18 eyeing an upgrade to 4.1.
> > > I tend to stay on the latest longterm, but not when they are first
> > > declared as longterm.  That seems to be the sweet spot for getting
> > > btrfs features and bugfixes, but not getting as many of the
> > > regressions.  I use grub2/dracut to boot, and that is in my guide.
> > > 
> > > If you follow those notes for a stage3 install it should "just work."
> > > If you want to mess around I suggest just doing a vanilla install on a
> > > VM once to validate that it works for you and then tweak from a
> > > position of strength.
> > 
> > Thanks.  I will check out your notes and figure out something -- it was
> > definitely strange.  I have a vm I can play with -- its older, but I can
> > bring it up to date and see what happens.
> > 
> > Thanks again.
> 
> One thing I was thinking of -- since I like separate file systems for
> each major directory i.e. separate /usr, /var, /home, /tmp and even
> /var/tmp/portage, I thought I would make btrfs file systems using lvm.
> The advantage is that I use lvm already, so this would be easy for me to
> do and safer in case one of them goes south and easier to control  space
> allocation.  The only disadvantage I can see is if its a performance
> hit, does anyone have any knowledge of that is true?

I only played around with ZFS so far, but I believe the same holds true for 
BTRFS.

These new filesystems should really be handed control of the entire disk as 
they already include LVM-like functionality.
You can create subvolumes and limit those to different sizes if you so desire.

When using an additional layer between ZFS/BTRFS and the discs, you will loose 
performance with no gain in flexibility.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs strategies (wasHard drive noise)

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 20.12.2015 um 08:40 schrieb J. Roeleveld:

> These new filesystems should really be handed control of the entire disk as 
> they already include LVM-like functionality.
> You can create subvolumes and limit those to different sizes if you so desire.
> 
> When using an additional layer between ZFS/BTRFS and the discs, you will loose 
> performance with no gain in flexibility.

And you lose the feature of protecting your blocks against bitrot!

btrfs comes with subvolumes and there is no need to use it on top of
LVM. If you want separated /, /usr, /var etc cut yourself subvolumes out
of your btrfs-filesystem, as mentioned.

forget LVM with btrfs, it's inside already in a way ;-)

I use btrfs on at least 3 systems for years now. No problems.

OK, it gives a bit of a learning curve. One big pool of storage
(depending on how many disks you throw into it), all the subvolumes
share the same free blocks ... this may feel scary and strange at first.

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs strategies (wasHard drive noise)

[covici]

Stefan G. Weichinger <lists@xunil.at> wrote:

> Am 20.12.2015 um 08:40 schrieb J. Roeleveld:
> 
> > These new filesystems should really be handed control of the entire disk as 
> > they already include LVM-like functionality.
> > You can create subvolumes and limit those to different sizes if you so desire.
> > 
> > When using an additional layer between ZFS/BTRFS and the discs, you will loose 
> > performance with no gain in flexibility.
> 
> And you lose the feature of protecting your blocks against bitrot!
> 
> btrfs comes with subvolumes and there is no need to use it on top of
> LVM. If you want separated /, /usr, /var etc cut yourself subvolumes out
> of your btrfs-filesystem, as mentioned.
> 
> forget LVM with btrfs, it's inside already in a way ;-)
> 
> I use btrfs on at least 3 systems for years now. No problems.
> 
> OK, it gives a bit of a learning curve. One big pool of storage
> (depending on how many disks you throw into it), all the subvolumes
> share the same free blocks ... this may feel scary and strange at first.
> 

When I did try it just that way, it failed completely.  I created the
structure, except that I put quotas on each of the subvolumes, and then
I rsynced the files from my non-btrfs copies which I had to do offline
using my grml cd, and when I rebooted back into the new arrangements, it
was a mess.  I also got advice from their mailing list that I might want
separate pools and this is why I was wondering about lvm, since I don't
want partitions again.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs strategies (wasHard drive noise)

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 6:25 AM,  <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
>
> When I did try it just that way, it failed completely.  I created the
> structure, except that I put quotas on each of the subvolumes, and then
> I rsynced the files from my non-btrfs copies which I had to do offline
> using my grml cd, and when I rebooted back into the new arrangements, it
> was a mess.  I also got advice from their mailing list that I might want
> separate pools and this is why I was wondering about lvm, since I don't
> want partitions again.
>

I'd probably avoid the quotas for the moment.  I believe they were
broken in some of the most recent kernels (which is why I've stopped
running the most recent kernels on btrfs, I'm sure they'll get it
sorted eventually).  Unless you REALLY need the quota support I'd just
put everything in one big filesystem and not run on top of LVM.

There are many things that could have gone wrong in your migration.
Unless you've identified what exactly it was, you're going to take the
risk that by installing LVM you still haven't fixed whatever went
wrong the first time, and you'll have less flexibility to address
issues in the future.

But, other than flexibility I don't think there are any issues with
using btrfs on top of LVM.  If you're using btrfs's raid capabilities
then I'd set up a different LVM volume group for each device so that
btrfs doesn't inadvertently store redundant copies on the same device.
That would be the opposite of how you'd normally use LVM, and just one
more reason not to use it.

Personally, I don't try to use separate filesystems for /var, /usr,
and so on.  It just fragments your free space and becomes a headache
to manage.  I could maybe see having a separate filesystem for /usr if
it were read-only and signed/verified, or for etc if it was a tmpfs,
and so on.


-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Adam Carter]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 232 bytes --]

See if SMART knows anything - run this against each drive (change $DRV to
sda etc each time)

smartctl -a /dev/$DRV | egrep
'(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 294 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Dale]

Adam Carter wrote:
> See if SMART knows anything - run this against each drive (change $DRV
> to sda etc each time)
>
> smartctl -a /dev/$DRV | egrep
> '(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'


It's currently running the test on most of these.  The sdd drive is the
new one.  The sdc drive is the same model but a couple years old, which
is why I bought this one since the last one was working fine.  The sda/b
drives are WD of different sizes.  sda has the OS on it and I think it
is the black type.  Sdb is a small backup drive that I copy things like
family photos and such too.  Yea, I also have DVD backups that are not
here at the house.  Here is the output:


root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sdd  | egrep
'(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE     
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail 
Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0 0 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age  
Offline      -       0
root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sdc | egrep
'(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE     
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail 
Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0 0 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age  
Offline      -       0
root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sdb | egrep
'(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE     
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail 
Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age  
Offline      -       0
root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep
'(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE     
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail 
Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age  
Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age  
Offline      -       0
root@fireball / #



That looks OK to me BUT it is currently running the test.  What I may do
is redo the file system and copy a new set of backups over to it.  Sort
of give it a bit of a workout and see if that spots anything.  I bet as
it is, they won't let me return it or anything.  It is working, just
making that noise. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Ian Bloss]

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If it's under warranty you can return it because it's clicking. You just
have to be "persuasive"...

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 20:16 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Adam Carter wrote:
> > See if SMART knows anything - run this against each drive (change $DRV
> > to sda etc each time)
> >
> > smartctl -a /dev/$DRV | egrep
> >
> '(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
>
>
> It's currently running the test on most of these.  The sdd drive is the
> new one.  The sdc drive is the same model but a couple years old, which
> is why I bought this one since the last one was working fine.  The sda/b
> drives are WD of different sizes.  sda has the OS on it and I think it
> is the black type.  Sdb is a small backup drive that I copy things like
> family photos and such too.  Yea, I also have DVD backups that are not
> here at the house.  Here is the output:
>
>
> root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sdd  | egrep
>
> '(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
> UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
>   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail
> Always       -       0
> 188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0 0 0
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age
> Offline      -       0
> root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sdc | egrep
>
> '(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
> UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
>   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail
> Always       -       0
> 188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0 0 0
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age
> Offline      -       0
> root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sdb | egrep
>
> '(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
> UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
>   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail
> Always       -       0
> 188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age
> Offline      -       0
> root@fireball / # smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep
>
> '(^ID|Reallocated_Sector_C|Reported_Uncorrectable_Er|Command_Timeout|Current_Pending_Sect|Offline_Uncorre)'
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
> UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
>   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail
> Always       -       0
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age
> Offline      -       0
> root@fireball / #
>
>
>
> That looks OK to me BUT it is currently running the test.  What I may do
> is redo the file system and copy a new set of backups over to it.  Sort
> of give it a bit of a workout and see if that spots anything.  I bet as
> it is, they won't let me return it or anything.  It is working, just
> making that noise.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Dale]

Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.  I got one on sale for under $100. 
> Anyway, I put it in, did the LVM thing and set up my backup script, very
> basic as it is.  A little bit ago, I noticed a sound.  It's not a click
> or a metallic type sound.  It sounds like the heads are doing random
> reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
> there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
> drives should be basically idle.  I even went to single user mode to be
> sure nothing in KDE was doing some index thingy or something.  Still,
> nothing showed that there should be any drive activity, including the
> hard drive light on the case. 
>
> <<<  SNIP  >>>
>
> Thoughts? 
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 
>
>


Well ain't this interesting.  I was about to pull the side off that
monster Cooler Master HAF-932 when I moved my router, which sits on top
of the case over the top fan.  When I moved it, the sound stopped.  When
I sat it back down, it made that noise again but slightly different. 
So, I moved the router a little further back.  Now all is quiet.  No
weird noises for the last several minutes now. 

After finding out about this drive, now I'm nervous about depending on
it for a backup.  Bad thing is, I've got two of these drives now. 
Different batches but still.  Since firmware seems to have some affect
on this, is this a good version to have?

Firmware Version: CC25 

That's on the new drive.  The old drive is:

Firmware Version: CC29 

Weird, my new drive seems to have older firmware than my old drive. 
How's that work I wonder?  My old drive is a couple years old at least. 

I think I'm leery of all drives now.  I've had WDs fail, Seagate and
some other brand.  I just keep buying bad stuff.  :-(   I'm glad I don't
have to buy pacemakers.   :/ 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[wabenbau]

Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think I'm leery of all drives now.  I've had WDs fail, Seagate and
> some other brand.  I just keep buying bad stuff.  :-(   I'm glad I
> don't have to buy pacemakers.   :/ 

It seems that many many years ago HDs were more reliable then today. 
I have five 4GB IBM SCSI HDs and one 40GB Seagate IDE HD in my cupboard 
that I've used 24/7 for about 8 years. They were still intact when I 
replaced  them.
But its hardly surprising that a drive with a capacity of some TB has 
a higher risk of failure than a drive with a capacity of 4GB or 40GB.

Since about three years I'm using four 3TB WD red HDs as storage drives 
and I bought two more some months ago. No failures with all of these 
drives so far.

--
Regards
wabe

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[J. Roeleveld]

On 19 December 2015 04:05:25 CET, wabenbau@gmail.com wrote:
>Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think I'm leery of all drives now.  I've had WDs fail, Seagate and
>> some other brand.  I just keep buying bad stuff.  :-(   I'm glad I
>> don't have to buy pacemakers.   :/ 
>
>It seems that many many years ago HDs were more reliable then today. 
>I have five 4GB IBM SCSI HDs and one 40GB Seagate IDE HD in my cupboard
>
>that I've used 24/7 for about 8 years. They were still intact when I 
>replaced  them.
>But its hardly surprising that a drive with a capacity of some TB has 
>a higher risk of failure than a drive with a capacity of 4GB or 40GB.
>
>Since about three years I'm using four 3TB WD red HDs as storage drives
>
>and I bought two more some months ago. No failures with all of these 
>drives so far.
>
>--
>Regards
>wabe

I've got 16 3TB WD Reds running 24/7 for a little over 3 years. 
Only had 1 failure (Smart complaining) in that time.

I find that decent odds.

--
Joost
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Thomas Mueller]

> I've got 16 3TB WD Reds running 24/7 for a little over 3 years.
> Only had 1 failure (Smart complaining) in that time.

> I find that decent odds.

> Joost

I bought a WD Green 3 TB hard drive in May 2011, warranty was then 3 years.  It went bad with errors after 34 months.

I was able to get a warranty replacement after much hassle, with the warranty on such drives down to 2 years.

That replacement hard drive went bad in about seven months, strange sounds reminiscent of a dialup modem, drive was no longer recognized by the computer.

At nearly the same time as the WD Green failure, a 3 TB My Book Essential 3 TB USB 3.0 hard drive, ordered at the same time as the WD Green drive, went somewhat bad with errors, but the warranty on that was 2 years.

Needing a hard drive for another computer (May 2013), and not trusting WD or "Green", I ordered a Seagate NAS 4 TB hard drive, figuring increased reliability compared to Barracuda or Desktop was worth the modest additional cost.

That drive is still good as far as I can tell.

Now I am considering an external hard drive with eSATA, more suitable for OS installation (Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Haiku?) than USB 3.0.  Only brand I find is Micronet Fantom (GForce), or use Seagate NAS hard drive in an enclosure with eSATA.

I really can't see why USB 3.0 is so more widely available than eSATA when eSATA seems superior as far as I can tell.

Tom

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 5:12 AM, Thomas Mueller
<mueller6726@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> Now I am considering an external hard drive with eSATA, more suitable for OS installation (Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Haiku?) than USB 3.0.  Only brand I find is Micronet Fantom (GForce), or use Seagate NAS hard drive in an enclosure with eSATA.

I use a cheap external "enclosure" with a port replicator.  The
replicator part is sometimes problematic - sometimes one drive or the
other isn't recognized and I need to power-cycle (which means
unmounting both drives before touching either).  But, otherwise it
works fine, and lets me just use whatever internal drive I want.

I use it for a few purposes:
1.  Ability to plug in external drives for offline storage (vs burning
tons of DVDs).  I had a growing collection of smaller drives I'd
replaced anyway, and I use them in RAID1 pairs.  Reminds me that I
should scrub them soon...

2.  Ability to easily hot-swap for drive failures.  When I get a RAID
failure I can plug a new drive into the enclosure as soon as I have it
and rebuild the array, which gets me back into full redundancy sooner.
Then at a convenient point I'll swap the drive into the internal bay.

>
> I really can't see why USB 3.0 is so more widely available than eSATA when eSATA seems superior as far as I can tell.
>

I suspect it is the ease-of-use factor.  USB external drives were more
common than eSATA back when USB meant USB 2.0 and eSATA was just as
good as it is today.  Clearly performance wasn't the deciding factor
here.

I will say that SATA port replicators seem finicky, at least under
Linux.  With USB it is all idiot-proof.  With SATA of any kind I end
up figuring out how many PCI cards I can jam into my PC with as many
ports each as possible if I want a large number of drives.  Backblaze
uses port replicators, but they've basically tailored their hardware
to a single purpose so they're using the motherboard+SATA+replicator
design that is optimal for their needs.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[J. Roeleveld]

On Saturday, December 19, 2015 08:02:12 AM Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 5:12 AM, Thomas Mueller
> 
> <mueller6726@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > Now I am considering an external hard drive with eSATA, more suitable for
> > OS installation (Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Haiku?) than USB 3.0.  Only
> > brand I find is Micronet Fantom (GForce), or use Seagate NAS hard drive
> > in an enclosure with eSATA.
> I use a cheap external "enclosure" with a port replicator.  The
> replicator part is sometimes problematic - sometimes one drive or the
> other isn't recognized and I need to power-cycle (which means
> unmounting both drives before touching either).  But, otherwise it
> works fine, and lets me just use whatever internal drive I want.

SATA and port replicators?
I've heard that for those to be reliable, you need a SAS controller.

> I use it for a few purposes:
> 1.  Ability to plug in external drives for offline storage (vs burning
> tons of DVDs).  I had a growing collection of smaller drives I'd
> replaced anyway, and I use them in RAID1 pairs.  Reminds me that I
> should scrub them soon...

I currently use 2.5" drives in hot-swap bays myself. External enclosures means 
similar amount of work swapping them, but with the added complexity and wiring 
when using external enclosures.

> 2.  Ability to easily hot-swap for drive failures.  When I get a RAID
> failure I can plug a new drive into the enclosure as soon as I have it
> and rebuild the array, which gets me back into full redundancy sooner.
> Then at a convenient point I'll swap the drive into the internal bay.
> 
> > I really can't see why USB 3.0 is so more widely available than eSATA when
> > eSATA seems superior as far as I can tell.
> I suspect it is the ease-of-use factor.  USB external drives were more
> common than eSATA back when USB meant USB 2.0 and eSATA was just as
> good as it is today.  Clearly performance wasn't the deciding factor
> here.

Power from the bus? (Eg. reducing the amount of cables)

> I will say that SATA port replicators seem finicky, at least under
> Linux.  With USB it is all idiot-proof.  With SATA of any kind I end
> up figuring out how many PCI cards I can jam into my PC with as many
> ports each as possible if I want a large number of drives.  Backblaze
> uses port replicators, but they've basically tailored their hardware
> to a single purpose so they're using the motherboard+SATA+replicator
> design that is optimal for their needs.

Backblaze actually wrote about which chipsets work together.
If you stick with those, it should work.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[J. Roeleveld]

On Saturday, December 19, 2015 10:12:22 AM Thomas Mueller wrote:
> > I've got 16 3TB WD Reds running 24/7 for a little over 3 years.
> > Only had 1 failure (Smart complaining) in that time.
> > 
> > I find that decent odds.
> > 
> > Joost
> 
> I bought a WD Green 3 TB hard drive in May 2011, warranty was then 3 years. 
> It went bad with errors after 34 months.

My experience with the WD Greens is similar. I don't trust them for important 
stuff.
They don't seem to manage 24/7 usage.

> I was able to get a warranty replacement after much hassle, with the
> warranty on such drives down to 2 years.
> 
> That replacement hard drive went bad in about seven months, strange sounds
> reminiscent of a dialup modem, drive was no longer recognized by the
> computer.
> 
> At nearly the same time as the WD Green failure, a 3 TB My Book Essential 3
> TB USB 3.0 hard drive, ordered at the same time as the WD Green drive, went
> somewhat bad with errors, but the warranty on that was 2 years.

I use the small 2.5" usb-drives from WD succesfully.
Only had 1 out of 8 die in the past 5 years. (Didn't bother with usb 
harddrives before then)

> Needing a hard drive for another computer (May 2013), and not trusting WD or
> "Green", I ordered a Seagate NAS 4 TB hard drive, figuring increased
> reliability compared to Barracuda or Desktop was worth the modest
> additional cost.
> 
> That drive is still good as far as I can tell.

Most manufacturers have good and bad drives.
Just make sure you pick the ones designed for your usage.
RAID setups don't like the aggressive powersaving implemented in "green" 
drives of any brand.

> Now I am considering an external hard drive with eSATA, more suitable for OS
> installation (Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Haiku?) than USB 3.0.  Only brand I
> find is Micronet Fantom (GForce), or use Seagate NAS hard drive in an
> enclosure with eSATA.
> 
> I really can't see why USB 3.0 is so more widely available than eSATA when
> eSATA seems superior as far as I can tell.

I think USB 3.0 is cheaper and more common.
Only seen the occasional eSATA port on laptops and afaik, eSATA requires a 
seperate powersupply. USB can supply the power for the drive as well.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Thomas Mueller]

> I think USB 3.0 is cheaper and more common.
> Only seen the occasional eSATA port on laptops and afaik, eSATA requires a
> seperate powersupply. USB can supply the power for the drive as well.

> Joost

USB hard drives, in my experience, come with and require AC power adapter, are not powered by the USB itself.

USB sticks don't need or have their own power.

Tom

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 20 Dec 2015 08:28:30 +0000, Thomas Mueller wrote:

> > I think USB 3.0 is cheaper and more common.
> > Only seen the occasional eSATA port on laptops and afaik, eSATA
> > requires a seperate powersupply. USB can supply the power for the
> > drive as well.  

> USB hard drives, in my experience, come with and require AC power
> adapter, are not powered by the USB itself.

3.5" drives do, but 2.5" drives can run off the USE bus, especially with
USB 3.0's higher current capacity.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

""  "   """  "  ""   "  """  <-- random quotes

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Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[wabenbau]

"J. Roeleveld" <joost@antarean.org> wrote:

> >Since about three years I'm using four 3TB WD red HDs as storage
> >drives
> >
> >and I bought two more some months ago. No failures with all of these 
> >drives so far.
> >
> >--
> >Regards
> >wabe
> 
> I've got 16 3TB WD Reds running 24/7 for a little over 3 years. 
> Only had 1 failure (Smart complaining) in that time.
> 
> I find that decent odds.

That sounds good. It seems that it was a good decision to buy these
drives.

The time will show how reliable they are when the warranty period is 
up. :-)

--
Regards
wabe

[gentoo-user] Re: Hard drive noise

[James]

Dale <rdalek1967 <at> gmail.com> writes:


> I finally got a new 3TB hard drive.
> Thoughts? 
> Dale

Lots of good information posted so far. 2 things I think are missed.
Recently, Thailand had some very bad flooding. TV showed clips
of the manufacturing districts Flooded by more than 20 feet. Many
HD manufacturing plants are in that area. Check, if you can the
location of the drive's manufacture. But those folks are very 
smart and probably partially disassembled the drives, shipped them
elsewhere, dried them out and re-assembled the parts....


Second and most critical:: Temperature. Monitor it and try to minimized 
thermal cycles on HD (all HD). Sure they will take it, minute differences 
in the "coefficient of expansion" of metals, allowances is what primarily
gives vibration and opportunity to be destructive after many thermal cycles
loosen things up a bit. There are numerous tools to monitor and log the
temps of drives...... Crappy, or loose (specification) drives will fail
faster that better quality drives (statistically). Over ventilation of the
chassis or housing containing the drives is always prudent. In a 4 HD bay
area, mount no more than (2) HD for best results.


hth,
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[Håkon Alstadheim]

Den 19. des. 2015 01:01, skrev Dale:
...
> It sounds like the heads are doing random
> reads/writes and the heads are moving but doing so noisily.  Thing is,
> there is no drive activity according to gkrellm or iotop.  All the
> drives should be basically idle. 
...
>  Model=ST3000DM001
What kind of file system ? How full ? Raid ? lvm ? What kind of SATA
controller? There is lots of stuff about these things I don't know, but
I /do/ know all those cause different quirks and telling more specifics
would maybe prod someone with experience with your particular type of
set-up to chime in.

Just as an example, ext4 will delay some of the work on a newly
formatted drive. Lots of other system activity can cause background
jobs. If this coincides with a bad sector on a drive, you get noise,
access latency and system wait. This system wait will not necessarily be
counted against any specific process in "top(1)" (depending on how your
kernel was compiled) , so you can even get 0%idle and still have no
specific process sticking out in "top".

Watch your logs and kernel messages for access errors. Difficulties in
reading might cause retries without actually timing out. If this is your
problem, it will persist until that sector is marked as failing AND
SOMETHING IS WRITTEN TO IT. The sector will not be mapped out until
something gets written to it.

Also, if you are running raid, google around for permutations of
"smartctl -T permissive -l scterc,70,70", seeing as this drive
<http://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/desktop-hdd-8tbDS1770-7-1511UK-en_GB.pdf>
is not a server type drive. But, remember, NEVER blindly run something
on your system that some random guy sent you by email without
understanding what it does. :-D .

Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive noise

[John Runyon]

> The thing is, EVERY
manufacturer has had drives like these.  Well, the Hitachi drives
Backblaze goes on about would be an exception

you've clearly never heard of DeathStars if you think Hitachi is an exception...

-John
Sent from my phone

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

>On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 7:49 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I also found this after the reply from Ian.
>>
>> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/
>>
>> No wonder they had it on sale.  Heck, why didn't they just say it was a
>> good door stop instead of a hard drive???
>>
>
>Yeah, the only reason I'd want to use that model drive is if I had a
>raid5 composed of entirely different drives and for some reason the
>discount on the Seagate 3TB drive let me bump it up to a raid6 (and to
>be sure I'd never put more than one of those in an array).  It is
>basically a doorstop.
>
>I had two of those go in the span of a year.  One was replaced under
>warranty.  The next was the warranty replacement.  That one was no
>longer under warranty, but after a scathing Amazon review Seagate
>actually commented on the review asking me to contact them about a
>replacement.  I didn't bother - I really was tired of swapping out
>drives at that pace and didn't consider the considerably-higher risk
>of a double failure worth it.
>
>i'd have to check - I think I picked a 4TB Seagate NAS drive to replace it.
>
>Somebody suggested not buying Seagate.  The thing is, EVERY
>manufacturer has had drives like these.  Well, the Hitachi drives
>Backblaze goes on about would be an exception, but they're
>SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive and I don't think it is worth the premium
>in a RAID.  For a single-drive system I'd strongly consider them.  I
>think I heard they were bought out at some point, so we'll see if
>their reputation holds.
>
>And that's the thing with brand reputations.  These days MBAs milk
>reputations.  Some finance guy realizes that people will buy this
>year's drives based on last year's reputation and cuts some corners
>and collects a huge bonus.  Three years later everybody is dealing
>with drive failures.  Every vendor does it.  That one Seagate model
>was about the worst I've personally seen, but who knows what model is
>being sold today that in three years will turn out to be just as bad,
>and it could come from any of the vendors.
>
>I do try to look at the Backblaze stats for what they're worth, but I
>think the general advice applies well.  Make sure you have an
>appropriate level of redundancy and backup strategy.  Make sure to mix
>models of drives in your RAIDs.  The whole point of a RAID is to keep
>the price down by increasing your tolerance of failures.
>
>And the whole NAS drive firmware thing really bugs me because they
>charge a premium for a few bits in flash memory that should be
>user-configurable anyway.  Some of those drives have better vibration
>resistance, which bugs me less.  However, the bottom line is that they
>probably will improve your RAID performance in the event of a failure,
>and they probably do tend to cut the corners less on them.  But who
>knows, maybe the drive that fails next year will be the super-premium
>edition.
>
>All of this goes to one of my drivers for using btrfs (and in this
>regard zfs will do just as well).  The checksumming means that I'm not
>really trusting the drive or its firmware at all, and I scrub my
>arrays weekly.
>
>Sorry you ended up with a bad drive...  That model IS considerably
>cheaper than most of the others...
>
>-- 
>Rich
>