Disk Disaster: SMART status "failing", can't mount - what to do?

Hi,
My GF's PB 12" started getting slow on disk access, so I - suspecting a hard disk failure was impending - checked SMART monitor status, and all seemed fine. Just the same, I made a full backup using SuperDuper.
Now, two weeks later, the drive has failed. Booting from the SD backup, and using Disk Utility to investigate the internal drive shows it as "failing", and the helpful advise is to get the data off as soon as possible. Unfortunately I can't mount the drive...
What is the best way to proceed? Should I just give up, and contact a data recovery service straight away, or is there a better way?

Hello! If you backed up what you thought was an ailing drive didn't you backup your important data every day? Seriously though if it's really important I'd probably check out DATARESCUE. Tom

Similar Messages

Powerbook G4 HD SMART Status: Failing

My powerbook G4 (1.5GHZ, 1GB RAM, OS 10.3.9)recently runs very slowly, sometimes freezed up during power off process. I checked the activity monitor to see none program hogging the cpu and memory, There are about 37GB free space on the hard drive. Checked the Disk Utility and saw the SMART status: Failing in red letters. Can anyone tell me if that is the sign the HD is going to die soon? If I used the install CDs to reinstall very thing, it will fix the problem or not? Or I just need a new HD? Luckly I was able to backup everything on my Mac to my desktop. Thx

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
That means that it's time to replace the hard drive, as it will fail shortly due to a hardware failure. If you want more detail on what is failing, install Smart Utility from Volitans.
New hard drives are cheap ... good source is Newegg.com, as they have many user reviews, good prices, good service. I've bought drives from them for years, and can recommend them. You'll want a parallel ATA interface 2.5" hard drive. Can't use a serial ATA (SATA) interface hard drive.

S.M.A.R.T. Status: Failing - Can't Erase

One of my dives has a S.M.A.R.T. Status of Failing. This is backup drive, so there is already a direct copy of it. The drive is still under warranty but before I send it back, I want to try and reformat it. In disk utility, I am not able to erase the drive. Is this because of the S.M.A.R.T. Status? Is there a way around this? Can I temporarily turn off the S.M.A.R.T. readings?

The status report tells you the drive is failing. Don't try to reformat the drive. It's under warranty so get it replaced.
Since you've told us nothing about what you see in DU when your try to format the drive, we can't give you any input. However, the SMART status has nothing to do with formatting the drive, but if the drive is failing then that could be why. You could try the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

SMART status failing on a WD Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM

I just recently purchased a Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM drive to put in my 1st Gen MacBook Pro. Ever since installing the drive, I've had random beach balls happen usually when there is a fair amount of disk I/O.
Thinking the drive was bad, I sent it back and got another one. I am still seeing the same frequent beach balls requiring a hard restart to get the system to be responsive again.
Checking the System Profiler, I see that the drive is failing SMART status. I also checked the kernel logs and am getting I/O errors on the drive at the point when the system beach balls.
I am pretty certain it isn't the drive. I'm at a loss for what to try next. Is this drive not compatible with my SATA interface. Any suggestions or comments?
Below are some of my pertinent machine information from System Profiler:
Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP11.0055.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.2f10
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
Below is the Serial-ATA information from the System Profiler:
Intel ICH7-M AHCI:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
WDC WD3200BEKT-60F3T1:
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200BEKT-60F3T1
Revision: 12.01A12
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing
Volumes:
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 297.77 GB
Available: 153.19 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
I also ran this to check the current speed of the SATA interface since the drive is a SATA II drive with a 3.0gb/s burst.
$ sudo ioreg -l | grep 'Interconnect"="SATA"'
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal/External"}
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","AHCI Port Number"=0,"Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal","Port Speed"="1.5 Gigabit$
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal"}
The above shows that the interface is running at 1.5gb/s SATA I which is what I excepted on this system.
Thanks!
Dustin

Sounds like you have things well sorted out.
Despite that fact that you have had two consecutive HDDs with defects does not, necessarily, mean that all of those drive are defective. However, you are fortunate that you were able to get you money back. Seagate makes good drives, as does WD, and hopefully you have paid your dues and you will have no more incidents.
Do post back should you run into stuff and need to bounce ideas off someone else.
Good luck.
cornelius
I will certainly report back on my luck with Seagate.
You are correct that the failure of two consecutive drives does not mean the whole line is faulty. The drive I was replacing in the MacBook Pro was actually a Western Digital Scopio as well (just not a Blue or Black) and it has performed flawlessly. It's the drive I have reinstalled twice now while I waited for the replacement drive to be shipped.
Another interesting anecdote is that I searched the NewEgg customer comments for reports of SMART errors on the Western Digital Scorpio Black drive I had ordered and sure enough, there were quite a few postings where people had tried multiple times to get a good drive.
It's just one of those things that you start to question, especially with older hardware like I am using (1st Gen MacBook Pro) that maybe backwards compatible quirks between SATA 1 and SATA 2 are the real problem not the drive itself. I'm still not 100% convinced that the drives were the true culprit. Hard to say for sure.
Not to mention all the troubles I've been reading about with 3rd party drives and the recent 1.7 EFI update which has caused similar errors as to what I was seeing with these drives. The first drive I had didn't throw any SMART errors, or at least I didn't notice them.
I'm gonna order the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9320423AS 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s and see what happens. I'll report back my findings in another thread so that people who search for the Seagate drive will have a more related thread to read.
Dustin

SMART Status = failed

Hi there, I have a 27" iMac from Mid 2010, been running slow the last couple of days, so done some PD. Looks like the hard drive is on its way out, with a SMART status of failed.
The questions are;
best ways to replace (ie, diy, take it in to an apple fixer)
the hard drive model is HDS722020ALA330 (2Tb Hitatchi) - looks like the model is discountinued, or very expensive to get hold of - what options should I be looking at?
Cheers

SSD's tend to be in the 2.5" format, generally with serial ATA interfaces. The difference between SATA II and SATA III has to do with the speeds they can support, with SATA II supporting 3 Gbit/s and SATA III supporting 6 Gbit/s.
If you can boot up your system (OS X DVD or external hard drive backup), click the apple on the left of the menu bar, about this mac, more info, system report, and serial ATA. You'll note on the Intel chipset that it will have a value for "link speed". If it's 3 gigabit, it's SATA II and 6 gigabit would be SATA III. That's what the system can support. Or you can look up your specs on everymac.com which will also tell you what serial ATA speed your macbook supports.
SATA III SSDs are supposed to be backward compatible to SATA II as needed. However, I recently upgraded our 2010 mac mini to an OWC SATA III SSD. Hooked it up, and the negotiated link speed was 1.5 gigabits, which is SATA I, with the mini capable of supporting SATA II. Turns out I had to install the OWC SATA II drive, which when hooked up, was running at SATA II speeds! OWC was very helpful and made the return as painless as possible.

[SOLVED] Booting Arch off USB HDD fails - can't mount real root device

I've installed Arch on the internal HDD (sda) of my laptop, and I attempted to install a second copy of Arch on partition sdb3 of an external USB HDD. sdb3 is a primary partition that I had prepared beforehand with gparted and outfitted with the reiserfs filesystem. I skipped section 3.2 (manually prepare hard drives) of the Arch installer. There was no problem with section 3.3 (manually configure filesystems and mountpoints); I put all of / in sdb3. Installing packages and configuring the system also went without a hitch.
I wanted to boot this new install of Arch via the boot menu of GRUB that was installed in the MBR of sda with my primary install of Arch. On the new install, I first did go through section 7 (install bootloader), thinking I would want to install GRUB in the root sector of partition sdb3 (not in the MBR of sdb where the GRUB of MintKDE resides, a boot menu that I want to keep) but that failed, so I then picked "no bootloader to be installed". With that I exited the new install, since it appeared to have gone to completion.
I then copied the appropriate stanza in the /boot/grub/menu.lst of this new Arch install to the /boot/grub/menu.lst of my primary Arch install on the internal HDD of my laptop.
This stanza reads as follows:
# (3) Arch Linux on WDPP60 blue (sdb3)
title Arch Linux on WDPP60 blue (sdb3)
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/191cc027-43ce-443b-8846-f265d60555ec ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
However, I'm not able to boot the new Arch install when I pick this entry from the GRUB menu list. The new install starts booting, finds sda but not sdb and stops with the following errors, dropping me to a recovery shell:
Root device /dev/disk/by-uuid... doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid...'
mounting /dev/disk/by-uuid... on /new_root failed: No such file ...
ERROR: Failed to mount the real root device.
Running "mount -t reiserfs /dev/sdb3 /new_root" at the ramfs prompt also fails.
I've tried a number of edits of the menu.lst stanza from the grub> command prompt, such as adding rootfstype=reiserfs, replacing root=/dev/disk/by-uuid..etc. with root=/dev/sdb3 (booting then fails with "/dev/sdb3 No such file"), using "initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img" etc., but booting always fails at the same stage with equivalent error messages.
I have no trouble booting half a dozen other Linux/BSD distros that reside on two different external USB HDD's by the same method, i.e. choosing an entry from the GRUB boot menu of my primary Arch install, after I placed the appropriate stanza in its /boot/grub/menu.lst.
How can I get this new Arch install to boot?
Last edited by RobF (2010-05-17 23:03:27)

Yes, this was in fact the solution. I stumbled upon it in this thread:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=65844
When one wants to boot from a USB mass storage device, the initrd needs to include the modules for accessing USB devices, and in Arch this is accomplished by adding "usb" to the HOOKS array. I simply reinstalled Arch to the USB HDD and in the system configuration step now edited /etc/mkinitcpio.conf by adding the "usb" item. Adding "rootdelay=10" and/or "rootfstype=reiserfs" to the kernel line in the appropriate stanza in Arch's /boot/grub/menu.lst wasn't necessary in this case. I left the stanza exactly as I posted it above.
Thanks for your input.

My Hard disk is full, and I can't find what did it.

I just recently purchased a 1080p sony handycam with AVCHD formatting and made a video in iMovie. The video was 30 minutes long and the raw event footage I used to make it up almost filed my hard drive. I went from 200gb to 20gb rather quickly, so I wanted to export the movie file and delete the events as fast as possible. But I saw that the normal export only did it in 960X540. So I used the "export using quicktime" option, despite not fully understanding it. I set it to do it at 1080p resolution and I let it do it's magic overnight. When I awoke, not only was there no file, but my hard drive was full, with about 74kb free. I assume a partial file was made, but I cant find it anywhere. Does anybody know where it may have gone to, what folder it's in, or what it's named. If not, is there an easy way to look into my hard drive and see all of my files organized from biggest to smallest, or something like that that would allow me to easily pinpoint the large file and delete it? Thanks to all for you help!

Once something similar happened to me. The external drives I had set up for FCP to use for some reason were not mounted, and FCP put all its render files on the main drive and I couldn't find them anywhere.
Go to applications, and control-click (and hold down) on your FCP icon; you should get a pop up menu that says "show package contents". Select that, select the "contents" folder, then the "mac OS" folder. See if your quicktime file is in there, or if you've got render files in the "render" folder or audio render files in the "audio render" folder that don't belong there.
That's where FCP sticks stuff when your documents FCP project folders are not available or when external drives you've selected aren't available.

Trying to recover my HP dv4-1543sb using the recovery disks and it has failed 3 times. What now?

I'm getting the message
"Recovery Manager could not restore your computer using the factory image. Please contact HP Support. Error code 0xe0ef0003'.

Enter the bios, hold F10 down while powering up, keep holding F10 until the bios loads, in there you will find hard drive and memory diagnostics, run both of the extended tests, post back any error codes.

Drive fails SMART status-"this drive has a hardware problem"

I recently did a major update of software and applications to my MacPro. (it's the first model of 8 core that came out). When I do a major update like this, I make a clone using Carbon Copy Cloner of the system drive to an external drive so I have a backup until I verify everything is good on the updated internal. I have 4 hard internal drives and have been having no trouble from them. However I noticed in Disk utility that one of the non-system drives is displayed in red and gives a warning that reads, "This drive has a hardware problem and can't be repaired. Backup the data and replace the drive". It also shows the SMART status as "failing". So I have everything copied to another drive.
I'll gladly replace the drive. However here's my confusion: when booting from the system cloned to the external drive, this same drive shows as being perfectly fine in Disk Utility. Both system drives have OSX 10.6.6. the only difference is newer applications on the internal system drive that reports failure (mostly audio related applications: Pro Tools, Reason, Roxio Toast).
So does anyone have any thoughts? I've read some other threads and they just report the failure and say to change the drive. I've not seen anyone else have one system that reports failure and another that doesn't.

SMART status failed is usually caused by too many suspected Bad Blocks. Some of these blocks may be unjustly accused of being permanently bad.
If you have the liberty to re-initialize the drive, doing so with security options "Zero all data, one pass" will ensure that (if the test completes without error) the drive once more has 100 percent good blocks. The process takes several hours to complete, longer if there are a lot or bona-fide errors.
It is also possible that the drive will produce "initialization Failed", in which case it should be retired if out of warranty, returned for replacement if still in warranty.
A drive that has ever seen a SMART status of Failed may get more Bad Blocks in the next six months. Or maybe this afternoon. If possible, it would be good to reduce your day-to-day use on this drive, such as making it a backup drive rather than using it all day every day for 'live" data.

Blank grey screen & SMART Status "not supported"

Hi,
My computer froze, I restarted it and the blank screen with blinking question mark came up. After reading a couple of posts on here I inserted my install disc and got to the Disk Utility screen. One post was talking about the "S.M.A.R.T. Status". My SMART status is "not supported". What does this mean?
And where do I go from here?
Any help/advice greatly appreciated....Thx!

HI and Welcome to Apple Discussions...
*"blinking question mark came up."*
A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac
A flashing question mark can mean several things. One, the drive is failing or has failed. Two, it can mean your computer can't find a system folder to boot from. Try booting while holding down the Option key. That prompts the Startup Manager window.
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

New HDD S.M.A.R.T. Status failing

Hello, Had a "S.M.A.R.T Status failing" warning last week. Bought back up disk to use with Time Machine. Brought the iMac into Apple for them to check it out and they ended up replacing the HDD and restoring everything on the disk as it was before we brought it in (apparently). When it was started up at the store, the same old beach ball appeared and the guy ensured us that was normal since it was a new install. Brought it home and looked under disk utilities and it still says "S.M.A.R.T Status failing" for that disk. There was no need to use our back-up from Time Machine as everything was still there. Is it possible that this disk was either not replaced, or it was replaced with another failing HDD? Or is there something that needs to be done to clear the SMART Status failing warning from the original back up from Apple store?The Genius at the store said it was replaced and that all we had to do was to do a restore from our backup. Anyone have any suggestions?

There is no value in guessing what happened at the store, the fact is you have a failing HD and need to take it back to be serviced. I would recommend speaking to the store manager to let him know what happened, do so in a calm, organized and friendly fashion though...you never may know when you need him as an ally. .

Can't mount SAN volume 'cause it already shows mounted.. but it's not

after controller 1 had a problem and controller 2 took over, one volume on one client (of 6) won't mount.
all volumes on all other clients OK..
the error says it's already mounted and looking at
ls -al /Volumes
it's there..
looking at df , it's not
looking at finder, it's not
running diskutil unmount , it's not
(or mount -u)
so I can't unmount what's there cause it's not there and I can't mount what's not mounted cause it thinks it already is mounted .
any ideas ??

after a MDC fail-over the finder sometimes creates an alias file with the name of the san volume. after all it's a broken alias.
disconnect the FC cable. in the finder (or terminal), go to /Volumes and remove the broken alias file.
cu. p.

S.m.a.r.t. status failing, HD won't mount, verify, or repair. Can't make disk image. Any other options?

My iMac won't boot up. It gets to the grey screen with the progress bar. Gets about a third through the progress bar, then shuts off.
I boot up with the recovery disk. The S.M.A.R.T. status is "failing." Disk Utility shows the following message:
"The disk has a hardware problem that can't be repaired. Back up as much data as possible and replace the disk. See and Authorized Apple dealer for more information."
I have tried:
• In disk utility the HD can't be verified or repaired
• Making a disk image from disk utility. I got a message "input/output error"
• Using my MacBookPro laptop to boot up the iMac in target disk mode. The iMac wouldn't mount.
I backed up up a few months ago, so I'm not totally out of luck. But there's a few recent projects I'd like to salvage.
This is a 21.5" iMac with 3.33 ghz, 2x2 gb, 1000gb running the latest Yosemite OS
Any further things I should try before carting the iMac to Tekserve? Thanks everybody.

I'm afraid from your description it sounds as if the disk is seriously damaged in some way. I don't think there is anything more you can do, short of taking it to a specialist recovery service which would be extremely expensive.
Your service engineer will take the disk out and replace it with a new one; ask to keep the original disk. You could try putting it in an enclosure (more expense) and seeing whether anything will access it, but I have to say that given what you've already done it's extremely unlikely you will have any sucess.

Can Disk Utility get SMART status from external drives?

I recently updated my backup plan with a NewerTech quad-interface dock and a WD Caviar Green hd. I'm using the FW800 interface to connect to my iMac (10.6.7) Everything works perfectly, as expected. I noticed, though, that Disk Utility cannot report the SMART status on the new WD drive. DU simply says "Not Supported" under SMART Status.
Is Disk Utility telling me that it doesn't read SMART status from external drives? Or is it telling me that the new drive doesn't support SMART (which I would find highly unusual)? And, if it's Disk Utility that can't read the status, are there any third-party apps that can report the SMART status on an external drive?
Thanks,
JimC

Unfortunately I cannot speak to the NewerTech enclosure, but in principle it appears to be possible to have SMART information displayed even for external drives if the enclosure's bridge controller chip allows it.
My experience:
I've used two MacPower Pleiades FW800/400/USB/eSATA enclosures for several years and I've now supplemented them with two additional inXtron enclosures. They all work as expected daisy-chained to the iMac.
The interesting thing is that the inXtron enclosures came with a CD with some software on it ("Smart AP") which is not available for download, notably a Dashboard Widget for displaying actual and maximum temperatures, total hours of operation, start/stop cycles, drive model and serial number.
This widget is complete garbage, though – it is a nauseating nightmare of extreme over-design at the expense of even basic usability:
http://www.inxtron.com/information-center/smart-ap-for-external-hard-drives
To make matters even worse, it can only display the above information for the first external drive connected.
BUT: This Widget internally calls a command line utility which does the actual parameter retrieval, and that one can be called from the terminal as well.
So after installing the software from CD and effectively discarding the Widget, I checked out the command line utility in the Terminal and found that this utility actually reported data about ALL my enclosures, both the inXtron and the MacPower ones (there seems to be firmware compatibility across these):
(The '$' is supposed to be Terminal's bash prompt – type in only the rest of the respective line.)
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 1
29 50 13 8
53 67 645 15829
52 53 90 7105
51 52 18 13
Each line reports the following for one connected enclosure:
[temp] [maxtemp] [cycles] [hours]
The drives are reported first USB, then FireWire drives, each in the order of first connection / mounting.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 2
WD-WCA**************
WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
WD-WMA**************
WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
Each drive gets two lines reported, first the drive's serial number ("***" blocking out my exact ones), then the drive model.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 3
29 50 13 8
WD-WCA**************
WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0
53 67 645 15829
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
52 53 90 7105
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
51 52 18 13
WD-WMA**************
WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
This combines both of the above.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 5
disk4
disk1
disk2
disk3
This reports the mounted disk names (referring not to the volume names but to the internal Unix names as in /dev/[drive]); Numbering is in connection / mounting order, the actual sequence is as always USB drives, then FireWire drives.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 6
USB
1394
1394
1394
This reports the connection interface for each drive in the same sequence as all other commands.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 7
MPT934DS1.20.0104.00
MPT934DS1.20.0104.00
This might report the firmware revision or something like that.
These are the commands I know about, and they apply only to the "Smart AP" software supplied with current inXtron enclosures, but it may be possible that other brands use it as well.
I have not been able to identify information about the self-test (early(?) failure warning), but it might be contained as well in the data reported above.
As always, your mileage may vary and you should never do such experiments without FIRST making sure you've got backups of your data and that such backup is not connected during experimentation!
Maybe this can help some people getting the information they need; And maybe there are similar capabilities with other enclosures. At the very least it demonstrates that with the proper firmware in the enclosures themselves and some software on the Mac it IS possible to get at least some of the SMART information from the drive in an external FireWire- or USB-connected enclosure.
None of that is fed into the system's "official" SMART mechanism, though, so no luck using standard mechanisms or applications for it. It's strictly a command-line affair (deservedly disregarding the mishappen Widget).
Good luck!

Internal hard drive/repair: SMART status; Disk Utility, Tech Tool & More

machine: 12" PowerBook 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 (Aluminium) with 80GB internal HD
internal hard drive (original): Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 series HTS541080G9AT00
hard drive firmware: MB4AA5AJ
ATA version: 6
ATA standard: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a
I have monitored the SMART status etc. of my internal drive with smartmontools for some time. Occasionally, I would see an error or a failed self-test but later testing always succeeded and things did not seem to be problematic.
At the beginning of this week, I started to see a lot of failed self-tests (though some still passed), a rising number of bad ("pending") sectors and reallocation attempts (though no reallocated sectors) and various other errors. The computer seemed to have trouble reading from the disk at times and Carbon Copy Cloner reported two I/O errors when cloning (a later clone succeeded). fsck showed errors although running fsck -fy repeatedly seemed to resolve them.
The Apple hardware tests initially reported an error (2STF/8/3:ATA-100 ata-6-Master) but I hadn't realised I should disconnect peripherals before running it so I did that and repeated the test which found no issues. I ran the extended test a total of three times with no errors.
As I continued to have problems, I booted from my clone and had Disk Utility wipe the drive by writing zeros to it. (I thought trying to get it to write everywhere would either finish the drive off or force it to reallocate the bad blocks. As I understand it, in normal use, the drive won't reallocate the blocks unless it can recover the data in the hopes of reading it at a later time.)
I then continued monitoring the disk using smartmontools. At this point, short self-tests succeed but extended self-tests "disappear". They don't fail, they simply vanish. They begin and smartctl shows the test in progress but then no error or result is logged - it is as if the test was never run. The first time I did this, I got an error saying the SMART attributes could not be read but subsequent tests do not trigger even an error. Short self-tests continue to pass.
There are now (according to SMART) zero bad ("pending") sectors but zero reallocated sectors, which seems odd. The raw read error rate fluctuates (zero one minute, many thousands a while later) although I am not sure it did not do this before.
Disk Utility claims the disk does not support SMART status even though smartctl clearly shows it does. Disk Utility claims the volume is "OK".
I ran Tech Tool Deluxe 3.04 from CD and 3.1.1 from my clone. In both cases, I ran all available tests on the drive. No problems were found.
I am seeing some problems even while booted from my clone - yesterday, the system froze completely and I had to force a shut-down by switching off the power (fsck then found a minor error but repaired it). Just before this happened, I was unable to mount a disk image and was trying to rectify the situation when the system froze. It is possible that the errors fsck corrected were implicated in the freeze, rather than caused by it, since Disk Utility found and repaired similar errors for the other two clones I have (on different partitions of my external drive - yes, I know this is sub-optimal).
Here is some current output from smartmontools:
---output: smartctl -q noserial -a disk0---
smartctl version 5.38 [powerpc-apple-darwin8.11.0] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 series
Device Model: Hitachi HTS541080G9AT00
Firmware Version: MB4AA5AJ
User Capacity: 80,026,361,856 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 6
ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a
Local Time is: Sat Jul 3 20:28:52 2010 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 645) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 55) minutes.
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 RawRead_ErrorRate 0x000b 100 100 062 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 SpinUpTime 0x0007 142 142 033 Pre-fail Always - 2
4 StartStopCount 0x0012 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 5793
5 ReallocatedSectorCt 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 SeekErrorRate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 SeekTimePerformance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 PowerOnHours 0x0012 039 039 000 Old_age Always - 26720
10 SpinRetryCount 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 PowerCycleCount 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 4168
191 G-SenseErrorRate 0x000a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
192 Power-OffRetractCount 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 201877487644
193 LoadCycleCount 0x0012 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 2209599
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 141 141 000 Old_age Always - 39 (Lifetime Min/Max 16/46)
196 ReallocatedEventCount 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 194
197 CurrentPendingSector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMACRC_ErrorCount 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 2138 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
CR = Command Register [HEX]
FR = Features Register [HEX]
SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
ER = Error register [HEX]
ST = Status register [HEX]
PoweredUpTime is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.
Error 2138 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 26716 hours (1113 days + 4 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
10 51 00 09 4f c2 a0 Error: IDNF
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC PoweredUpTime Command/Feature_Name
b0 d6 01 09 4f c2 a0 00 08:30:04.500 SMART WRITE LOG
b0 d5 01 09 4f c2 a0 00 08:30:04.300 SMART READ LOG
b0 d1 00 00 4f c2 a0 00 08:30:04.000 SMART READ ATTRIBUTE THRESHOLDS [OBS-4]
b0 d0 00 00 4f c2 a0 00 08:30:04.000 SMART READ DATA
b0 da 00 00 4f c2 a0 00 08:30:04.000 SMART RETURN STATUS
Error 2137 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 26682 hours (1111 days + 18 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
40 51 28 18 95 98 e4 Error: UNC 40 sectors at LBA = 0x04989518 = 77108504
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC PoweredUpTime Command/Feature_Name
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:37.600 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:30.600 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:22.600 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:16.300 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 40 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.700 READ DMA EXT
Error 2136 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 26682 hours (1111 days + 18 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
40 51 21 1f 95 98 e4 Error: UNC 33 sectors at LBA = 0x0498951f = 77108511
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC PoweredUpTime Command/Feature_Name
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:30.600 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:22.600 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:16.300 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 40 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 93 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.100 READ DMA EXT
Error 2135 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 26682 hours (1111 days + 18 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
40 51 22 1e 95 98 e4 Error: UNC 34 sectors at LBA = 0x0498951e = 77108510
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC PoweredUpTime Command/Feature_Name
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:22.600 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:16.300 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 40 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 93 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.100 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 40 93 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:13.500 READ DMA EXT
Error 2134 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 26682 hours (1111 days + 18 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
40 51 28 18 95 98 e4 Error: UNC 40 sectors at LBA = 0x04989518 = 77108504
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC PoweredUpTime Command/Feature_Name
25 00 80 c0 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:16.300 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 40 94 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 93 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:14.100 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 40 93 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:13.500 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 c0 92 98 e0 00 1d+01:30:12.100 READ DMA EXT
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBAof_firsterror
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26717 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26717 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26717 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26717 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26716 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26715 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26714 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26697 -
# 9 Extended offline Completed: read failure 10% 26692 75071682
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26687 -
#11 Extended offline Completed: read failure 10% 26676 77108511
#12 Short offline Completed: read failure 40% 26663 296917
#13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26657 -
#14 Short offline Completed: read failure 10% 26646 296918
#15 Short offline Completed: read failure 70% 26645 296905
#16 Short offline Completed: read failure 10% 26644 296910
#17 Short offline Completed: read failure 10% 26644 296910
#18 Short offline Completed: read failure 40% 26643 296916
#19 Short offline Completed: read failure 20% 26643 296909
#20 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 26620 -
#21 Short offline Completed without error 00% 26618 -
Warning! SMART Selective Self-Test Log Structure error: invalid SMART checksum.
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENTTESTSTATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
---end output---
Self-tests 1-8 were all run after I erased the disk. The others were run before I did so. Not listed are the extended self-tests I've started since erasing which, as I say, have simply disappeared.
The checksum error regarding the log is normal for this disk. At least, I've got that error ever since I started using smartmontools for monitoring so I assume it is normal. (I installed this version of the software in about April 2008 and have used it since.) Also, starting offline testing has never succeeded on this disk (I think I checked into this at the time but can't quite remember - this is not new, anyway).
Questions
how should I interpret all this? (Why does Disk Utility say SMART is not supported while smartctl clearly shows it is at the same time? Why do the extended tests simply vanish? Is the drive definitely dying?) I do not want to replace the disk unless I absolutely have to because I understand that replacing disks in 12" PBs is no small matter and cost is an issue. I do not want to replace the machine unless I have to because cost is an issue and, also, I really like this computer and have no idea what I would want in its place, even if expense were no obstacle.
if it isn't clear whether the drive is dying or not, is there some further strategy I can use to establish this?
if the drive is dying, is a machine of this age worth repairing and, if it is, under what circumstances is it worth doing so? For example, it might be worth doing if you can do the job yourself, but that might be quite impractical for non-expert (not to mention, inexpert) users.
if there is a hardware problem (which I obviously think is very, very probable at this point), is it definitely a dying hard drive? (I've seen people write ominous things about disk controllers etc. which I gather are more serious - or less repairable - than a "mere" dying disk.)
what questions should I be asking you and what are the answers to those questions?!
Many thanks for your patience in reading this far.
- cfr

The 12" PB internals are a bit more complex, for PB's. If you don't want to replace the hard drive yourself or pay someone to install it, you could always get an external firewire hard drive, and use it to boot from and for general usage. Would have to be firewire, since the PB won't book from a USB device. One example of what you could get is a 160GB external hard drive: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MS4U5160GB8/ . All the choices with that case are listed here: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
Have you called any Apple Authorized Service Providers to see what they would charge to install a drive for you? Whether you bought it or they supplied it? You can find a local one in the US at http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service/

Disk Disaster: SMART status "failing", can't mount - what to do?

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