Disk failure of my HDD?

Question

[votproductions@Arch ~]$ sudo uname -a
Linux Arch 3.3.7-1-ck #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon May 21 21:50:24 EDT 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I think one of my disks are failing, /dev/sdb at ata4.0.
Here's an extract from dmesg:
[ 3210.426363] ata4: lost interrupt (Status 0x50)
[ 3210.426380] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[ 3210.426384] ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA
[ 3210.426390] ata4.00: cmd c8/00:00:8f:ad:c9/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 131072 in
[ 3210.426391] res 40/00:01:01:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[ 3210.426394] ata4.00: status: { DRDY }
[ 3210.426402] ata4: soft resetting link
[ 3210.690275] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 3210.690287] ata4: EH complete
Edit: Also displays READ DMA EXT and IDENTIFY DEVICE.
Here's smartctl for the drive:
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-3.3.7-1-ck] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9
Device Model: ST3160812AS
Serial Number: 5LS8BP3F
Firmware Version: 3.ADJ
User Capacity: 160,000,000,000 bytes [160 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Wed May 30 15:43:41 2012 IST
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
See vendor-specific Attribute list for marginal Attributes.
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
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: ( 430) 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.https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=142371
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: ( 54) minutes.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
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 117 084 006 Pre-fail Always - 120025057
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 099 093 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 096 096 020 Old_age Always - 4490
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 081 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 17677491374
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 085 085 000 Old_age Always - 13545
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 096 096 020 Old_age Always - 4224
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 058 039 045 Old_age Always In_the_past 42 (Min/Max 42/42)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 042 061 000 Old_age Always - 42 (0 14 0 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 109 045 000 Old_age Always - 42397154
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 13536 -
# 2 Short offline Aborted by host 80% 13536 -
# 3 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 7632 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 -
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
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.
So why does it matter?
Trying to access it via Dolphin ends up Dolphin being frozen. Trying to access it via Thunar says it's loading but it doesn't complete. Manual mount and fdisk -l simply stall. Finally, boot is spammed with those errors and it keeps checking for this drive and because of that, boot has increased to 10 minutes. But IMPORTANTLY, if I let the PC rest for a few minutes, the disk returns to normal for 5 minutes.
This is a NTFS device, so I checked it using chkdsk on Windows and VERY slowily (used to be 5 minutes, now I have to leave it for an hour), it completes and it says there are no errors.
The good news is that it's a backup device, so it doesn't contain any data that are important because they are all on my other sda1 disk, used also for the OS. However, I still would like this one fixed, because it suddenly just did that...
I also did change the cable connection, and that DID work for a while. The first time this happened, I replugged the SATA drive and it worked for a day. Second time it happened, I did the same and it worked for another day. But today, I did that, and it DIDN'T work. I even tried swapping cables from the main sda1 to this, nope, doesn't work.
If you are wondering why on earth am I running a SATA drive in IDE mode, it's because the BIOS only supports IDE mode and yet, detects SATA drives -_-.
Any thoughts?
Edit: Pacman stalls on checking for file conflicts too!
Last edited by VOT Productions (2012-05-30 20:52:29)

Answer 1

The drive seems to be dying alright, I would do as MoonSwan recomends, get another drive that is larger than that one and do a full disk backup. Do use any reasonable means to keep the dying drive cool as it will probably give you a better chance of recovering all data.
Don't run any more tests on the drive as it will add more working hours to a drive that is already not too well, one extra pass of a test can be the difference between getting all data and having some data lost.
@cfr
The tests were probably issued manually and since short offline tests last for only a couple of minutes it is possible to have more than one test in the same hour.
As for getting "Aborted by host" status, I believe that it is not uncommon, at least for extended offline tests, but if I remember correctly I've never seen that for short offline tests. The reason why it happens is that you issue the test and then leave the drive alone, since there is no activity from the outside to the drive it may go to sleep, or something may put the drive to sleep, such as an usb/sata/ide controller bridge, in that case the test will be aborted and the status will be "Aborted by host".
I have seen this behavior with some of my external hard drives and I needed to put a script doing something on the drive every couple of minutes to keep it from going into standby so the extended offline test could be completed.