SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

deukalion · 2010-09-10 10:30:44

Hey. I just bought a new OCZ-VERTEX2 60 GB SSD disk and installed Windows 7 (Partition 1, 100 MB - Partition 2, 36 GB) and Arch Linux (Parition 3, 21 GB - Partition 4 - 512 Swap)
And after I configured Xorg and entered Gnome, palimpsest reports that my disk has "MANY BAD SECTORS" - but this seems unlikely?

Is there anything I've missed doing while formating the drive to be used as a root system?
I don't know if there's anything special I need to be doing while formatting this drive or if there really is MANY BAD SECTORS. Also, SMART is disabled in my BIOS - so where's it reading the data from?

Anyone who could help or have some suggestions or knowledge about this?

Thanks.

deukalion · 2010-09-10 10:34:06

Also, the harddrive appears to be very slow compared to while working with it in Windows.

deukalion · 2010-09-10 18:39:34

1) I tried Ubuntu without SWAP and it says "There are some bad sectors"

2) I just formatted the drive in Windows and it says there's no bad sectors on either partition.

So, anyone has any idea why Linux does this? Is there's something I need to make SSD disks work properly or is it just a bug in DISK-UTILITY (palimpsest) ?

.:B:. · 2010-09-10 20:50:22

Deukalion, you shouldn't bump your topic by replying to your own posts. Edit your opening post and add the information to it. Bumping is not allowed within 24 hours of opening your topic.

As for your problem: how is performance on Linux compared to Windows? Do you get similar read/write speeds? If not there might be a compatibility problem with Linux, and who knows what kind of peculiarities that can introduce...

eanderalx · 2011-01-04 07:23:18

Same Problem hear,

A new SSD OCZ-Vortex2 60GB
I've installed Arch x64 (only Arch no Windows).
Next day reboot, smart say there are 672 bad sectors.

I've formatted the SSD with

fdisk -H 32 -S 32 /dev/sda

 sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Platte /dev/sda: 60.0 GByte, 60022480896 Byte
32 Köpfe, 32 Sektoren/Spur, 114483 Zylinder, zusammen 117231408 Sektoren

hdparm:

sudo hdparm -t --direct /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 782 MB in  3.00 seconds = 260.36 MB/sec

Seems to be average full speed.

fukawi2 · 2011-01-04 08:54:00

FWIW, I've been getting the same errors for the last ~2 months with an OCX SSD running Arch64 @work... I've just ignored the warnings. So far so good, but it is annoying.

toad · 2011-01-04 10:42:58

Hm, did you align your SSDs properly? Check this thread for more info if needed (and if it helped create a wiki page while you are at it )

litemotiv · 2011-01-04 11:03:33

toad wrote:

Hm, did you align your SSDs properly? Check this thread for more info if needed (and if it helped create a wiki page while you are at it )

I don't believe that aligning the SSD has anything to do with these bad sector reportings, so i would advise against repartitioning the drive to try to solve this.

In general, i would take sector reports for SSD's with a grain of salt. SSD's have their own marking and recovery systems that are different from classic smart implementations. Lastly, palimpsest has a known bug with falsely reporting errors on SSD's that were originally partitioned under Windows.

toad · 2011-01-04 11:21:23

But does non-alignment not cause double rw activity, reduced life span and consequently increases the likelihood of bad sectors? That was my thinking anyway...

litemotiv · 2011-01-04 12:54:30

toad wrote:

But does non-alignment not cause double rw activity, reduced life span and consequently increases the likelihood of bad sectors? That was my thinking anyway...

No not really, non-aligning means that the end of a block could lie outside a physical sector, so for write operations possibly one extra sector needs to be written. While this is sub-optimal, the extra wear and performance overhead is relatively small. On a new SSD this would certainly not be a cause of bad sectors.

toad · 2011-01-04 13:01:16

Thanks for the clarification, litemotiv.

eanderalx · 2011-01-04 20:51:23

toad wrote:

Hm, did you align your SSDs properly? Check this thread for more info if needed ...

I follow this thead for the alignment.

The SSD was bought with a second OCZ Vortex 2 which works fin with ubuntu and standard alignment.
This SSD also work fin in my first tests with Ubuntu (its our standard distro at work, my Arch is the only one) or the smart test from gnome doesn't run. I only make some speed tests for one or two days.

Yesterday I installed my arch with the alignment written in the ocz thead and today gnome say "one of your disks will fail".
Therefore the alignment is my only reference to understand this.

But first I will see if the count of bad sectors increase next time. If not I will handle it like fukawi2 until I have time to reinstall a second time and test the ssd with destructive options.
Or perhaps someone has a better idea.

And when the SSD really fail I have a backup and re-installation is no problem.

Last edited by eanderalx (2011-01-04 21:27:25)

fukawi2 · 2011-01-04 21:51:06

Having a look at this this morning, and I think the culprit may be SMART itself... Running 'smartctl' over the drive shows this:

~ $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     SandForce Driven SSDs
Device Model:     OCZ-VERTEX2
Serial Number:    OCZ-R4S3TRCHGPF106QO
Firmware Version: 1.11
User Capacity:    60,022,480,896 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 6
Local Time is:    Wed Jan  5 08:49:12 2011 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Error SMART Values Read failed: Input/output error
Smartctl: SMART Read Values failed.

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: UNKNOWN!
SMART Status, Attributes and Thresholds cannot be read.

Error SMART Error Log Read failed: Input/output error
Smartctl: SMART Error Log Read Failed
Error SMART Error Self-Test Log Read failed: Input/output error
Smartctl: SMART Self Test Log Read Failed
Device does not support Selective Self Tests/Logging

The interesting part being that the drive says it supports SMART, but apparently doesn't:

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Error SMART Values Read failed: Input/output error
Smartctl: SMART Read Values failed.

Fadel · 2011-01-04 22:37:51

I don't know whether this is relevant to your problem but, a few months ago, when I intalled gnome on my laptop (SATA HDD) palimpsest kept warning me about disk errors. Then, a few months later I had to completely reinstall Arch and then the problem was gone. I also noticed this problem on Fedora. I did some checks back then on Windows but it found nothing at all.

eanderalx · 2011-01-05 07:13:30

I can read smart values without errors

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     SandForce Driven SSDs
Device Model:     OCZ-VERTEX2
Serial Number:    OCZ-4M3H780RC6BDQM75
Firmware Version: 1.11
User Capacity:    60.022.480.896 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 6
Local Time is:    Wed Jan  5 08:11:43 2011 CET
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:          (   0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x7f) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Abort Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    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:      (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (  48) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x003d)    SCT Status supported.
                    SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
                    SCT Feature Control supported.
                    SCT Data Table supported.

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   120   120   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0/0
  5 Retired_Block_Count     0x0033   092   092   003    Pre-fail  Always       -       672
  9 Power_On_Hours_and_Msec 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       32h+58m+30.910s
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       26
171 Program_Fail_Count      0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0030   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       10
177 Wear_Range_Delta        0x0000   000   000   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       0
181 Program_Fail_Count      0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
195 ECC_Uncorr_Error_Count  0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0033   100   100   003    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
231 SSD_Life_Left           0x0013   088   088   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       1
233 SandForce_Internal      0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
234 SandForce_Internal      0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB     0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       64

Error SMART Error Log Read failed: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
Smartctl: SMART Error Log Read Failed
Error SMART Error Self-Test Log Read failed: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
Smartctl: SMART Self Test Log Read Failed
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.

But interesting is that we both have the same old firmware

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ssd_tools/ … Agility_2/

Last edited by eanderalx (2011-01-05 09:28:14)

trusktr · 2011-02-09 06:03:27

I don't have a SSD, but i'm having a similar problem where Gnome pops up a notification (Disk Utility) that says my sata disk might be failing and "Disk has many bad sectors" when I log in. The disk is new (6 or 7 months) so this error seems strange.

I know SSDs and SATA drives are different, but perhaps the seemingly bogus reports have something in common.

I made a post about it on LinuxQuestions.org in hopes of finding a solution:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … rs-861534/

Last edited by trusktr (2011-02-09 06:05:09)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-09-10 10:30:44

SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#2 2010-09-10 10:34:06

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#3 2010-09-10 18:39:34

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#4 2010-09-10 20:50:22

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#5 2011-01-04 07:23:18

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#6 2011-01-04 08:54:00

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#7 2011-01-04 10:42:58

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#8 2011-01-04 11:03:33

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#9 2011-01-04 11:21:23

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#10 2011-01-04 12:54:30

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#11 2011-01-04 13:01:16

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#12 2011-01-04 20:51:23

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#13 2011-01-04 21:51:06

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#14 2011-01-04 22:37:51

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#15 2011-01-05 07:13:30

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

#16 2011-02-09 06:03:27

Re: SSD Disk (Brand new) - palimpsest reports "DISK HAS MANY BAD SECTORS"

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