About USB hard drives and errors
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From: Paul E Condon on 11 Apr 2010 17:50 On 20100411_005025, Stan Hoeppner wrote: > Paul E Condon put forth on 4/10/2010 11:41 PM: > > > So, the fact that my WD drives don't play well with S.M.A.R.T doesn't > > make them special, and I should not spend much, if any, time looking > > for a USB solution. What other options are there for external HD? > > You're got 3 USB hard drives already, and you're throwing them out and > looking for another solution, just because they don't do S.M.A.R.T? If > neither USB nor firewire do smart, you choices are very limited. Well, the sad story is that I don't really want to do S.M.A.R.T. I was experiencing disk errors on the drives which caused something in the kernel to throw a fit. When this happened, the only recovery I could find was to reboot. This is slow and not really a way to learn how to fix the problem. So I ask for advice on this list. I work down the list of suggestions, not having much success, and arrive at smartctl. But now we know that that doesn't work for reasons that I might have known if I had read the whole of wikipedia and had total recall --- but I hadn't and I don't. Since my last post, I have succeeded in doing a successful, error free, backup to each of the disks. One notable fact about all the errors is that after reboot it would appear that no data was lost and the backup could be resumed from where it advanced to just before the crash. The only thing that I can think that I did differently in these new successful runs is that I did not sit at the computer and watch. Can software detect being watched? I think not, but ... My reading about eSATA gives me suspicion that it has its own poorly documented problems. I'm not convinced that I cannot make USB work without S.M.A.R.T, but I really don't have any good ideas as to how. And now, without errors happening fairly frequently, I doubt that I will be able to test and debug any approach that I dream up. > > The only other realistic option I know of is eSATA, but a quick scan of > Newegg shows only 6 devices total, 2 DVR expander drives and 4 eSATA RAID > enclosures. I have no idea if the DVR expander drives will work with a > standard PC setup. They "should". The two DVR drives are both 1TB and both > just under $130 USD, one Iomega and one Western Digital: > > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822186175 > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136384 > > Are you planning on connecting this drive to a laptop or desktop? To > multiple computers or just one computer? This is for a LAN of desktop systems, three computers in all. One computer acts as a collector of backups from the itself and the other two, and is responsible for getting the files onto an external drive in a timely way. All of the computers are hand-me-downs. None have eSATA capability. So far I have not convinced myself that spending money would help solve the problem. Perhaps in a few years, computers with eSATA will start showing up in dumpsters. Maybe I should just wait. -- Paul E Condon pecondon(a)mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100411214050.GF10774(a)big.lan.gnu
From: Stan Hoeppner on 11 Apr 2010 22:20 Paul E Condon put forth on 4/11/2010 4:40 PM: > All of the computers are hand-me-downs. None have eSATA capability. So > far I have not convinced myself that spending money would help solve > the problem. Perhaps in a few years, computers with eSATA will start > showing up in dumpsters. Maybe I should just wait. Hand-me-downs aren't well known for their reliability, especially if they weren't, ahem, treated/handled properly during the decommissioning process. If these external USB hard drives were new-in-box, I'd suspect the USB cables/interface more than I would the new drives. I assume you've swapped the USB cables? If you're powering the external USB drives via the USB cable, DON'T. Plug in the wall wart transformer to power the drives. You could be having issues with dirty/insufficient power on the USB cable to the drive. Have you purchased and installed a ~$10 PCI USB 2.0 card, loaded the drivers, and tested the reliability of the drives with the PCI USB card? If not, I'd recommend that as your next step. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4BC28212.90506(a)hardwarefreak.com
From: Hugo Vanwoerkom on 12 Apr 2010 16:30 Celejar wrote: > On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:06:06 -0600 > Paul E Condon <pecondon(a)mesanetworks.net> wrote: > > ... > >> I got a little less timid and tried running smartctl even though I was >> quite unsure of what to expect. It ran. Each of the three USB HD gave >> somewhat different output, but none gave output that claimed there was >> a working SMART on the drive. These drives are Western Digital (WD). >> The WD web site mentions SMART and also uses the words Smart Drive to >> mean something else that is a proprietary marketing thing, AFAICT. I >> was unable to find a list of part #s for drives that support S.M.A.R.T. >> >> I think I should be in the market for a better class of drives, but not >> this weekend. Thanks for the help. > > My understanding is that S.M.A.R.T. doesn't generally work over USB. > As Wikipedia puts it: > > For example, few external drives connected via USB and Firewire > correctly send S.M.A.R.T. data over those interfaces. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Standards_and_implementation > I can use smart on my USB drive enclosure with an ATA drive but not with my USB drive enclosure with a SATA drive. Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/hpvvd4$4pp$1(a)dough.gmane.org
From: Paul E Condon on 12 Apr 2010 18:40 On 20100412_152156, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: > Celejar wrote: > >On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:06:06 -0600 > >Paul E Condon <pecondon(a)mesanetworks.net> wrote: > > > >... > > > >>I got a little less timid and tried running smartctl even though I was > >>quite unsure of what to expect. It ran. Each of the three USB HD gave > >>somewhat different output, but none gave output that claimed there was > >>a working SMART on the drive. These drives are Western Digital (WD). > >>The WD web site mentions SMART and also uses the words Smart > >>Drive to mean something else that is a proprietary marketing > >>thing, AFAICT. I > >>was unable to find a list of part #s for drives that support S.M.A.R.T. > >> > >>I think I should be in the market for a better class of drives, but not > >>this weekend. Thanks for the help. > > > >My understanding is that S.M.A.R.T. doesn't generally work over USB. > >As Wikipedia puts it: > > > >For example, few external drives connected via USB and Firewire > >correctly send S.M.A.R.T. data over those interfaces. > > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Standards_and_implementation > > > > I can use smart on my USB drive enclosure with an ATA drive but not > with my USB drive enclosure with a SATA drive. > > Hugo Very interesting --- but My quick googling reveals many USB drive enclosures for both ATA and SATA but the marketers don't make mention of S.M.A.R.T . What is the brand of your enclosure. I want to look for it, in particular, and see if it claims the feature that you have discovered. Actually, on looking a little more closely, I'm not seeing any case of a single enclosure that can be used with both ATA and SATA. Do I read your post correctly - your enclosure can contain either a SATA or an ATA, and work over USB? But SMART only works when it is enclosing an ATA? -- Paul E Condon pecondon(a)mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100412223607.GL10774(a)big.lan.gnu
From: Clive McBarton on 12 Apr 2010 19:40
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Paul E Condon wrote: >> My understanding is that S.M.A.R.T. doesn't generally work over USB. > > So, the fact that my WD drives don't play well with S.M.A.R.T doesn't > make them special, and I should not spend much, if any, time looking > for a USB solution. What other options are there for external HD? A quick partial solution could be: If you just want to read the SMART tables once, say to see how many sectors have been remapped, you can simply take the HD out of its enclosure and temporarily connect it directly inside your PC. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkvDrRAACgkQ+VSRxYk440/TwACg6US5ORZajsE0+8fIgAdsnD2o T9sAn2+wxSvbTdJ4G1RpGcF29J2coTVh =7LV8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4BC3AD10.6080506(a)web.de |