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thelsdj
Asked: 2013-01-25 20:05:10 +0800 CST

smartctl reports Current Pending Sectors as 2, but a long test doesn't find any errors

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The SMART attributes on the drive are:

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     0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       391
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   181   165   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       5916
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       259
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000e   200   200   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   068   068   000    Old_age   Always       -       23804
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       259
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       99
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       309
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   123   097   000    Old_age   Always       -       27
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   051    Old_age   Offline      -       1

But running a long test reports:

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     23734         -

So what am I supposed to do now to clear the Current Pending Sector count? The error log doesn't provide any LBA's either.

Edit: The Current Pending Sector count was previously at 0 and I had previously had this drive have a few sectors that were bad and I was able to locate and write them to clear the pending sector count. So the real question is, what is the explanation for why the pending sector count would go up without telling me what the location is?

hard-drive

2 Answers

  1. You can't clear the current pending sector count. Generally, a few sectors may be marked as bad even before the drive leaves the factory without it being an issue. As long as the number of reallocated and/or pending sector count doesn't /move/, the drive is fine, even with a few sectors screwed up. It's when the counts start going up that the disk should be considered in danger.

    Also, in general, many disks will not fail their SMART checks until way, way after they are corrupted with tens of thousands of bad sectors and are very much fried.

    Long story short: What do you do? Watch and wait.

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  2. I have this same problem and I can see the error with "smartctl -l xerror /dev/sdb" , but it doesnt pop up in selftest and dd seems to read the block ok. I am currently trying to overwrite it raid , but I am hesistant to just zero the block.

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