Poor mounted partition performance

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-16 16:50:25

I have installed a second SATA hard drive in my computer. I created a 200GB partition in it. In order to access this I have added the following to my /etc/fstab:

UUID=e9bbba53-b670-4435-8fc1-24058e6fa458 /mnt/Media ext4 defaults 0 0

I then ran `chown -R jonny /mnt/Media` and `chmod -R 755 /mnt/Media` to gain write access to the folder.

I copied some files accros to it yesterday, I am now unable to play the files. MPlayer just stutters to a stop. I thought maybe there was an error in copying the files accros so I thought I'd look at the checksums and compare with the original files on my external hdd, but md5sum throws an Input/output error.

Any help? Thanks

ewaller · 2011-05-16 17:30:09

I would suggest you start by unmounting it and then running fsck on it. If the drive supports SMART, I'd fire up one of the SMART clients and have the drive perform a surface scan.

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-16 18:03:35

So I've commented the releavent line in fstab and rebooted. Running fsck gave:

[jonny@jonny-arch ~]$ sudo fsck /dev/sdb2
Password: 
fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
MEDIA: clean, 55/12804096 files, 2644377/51200000 blocks (check in 2 mounts)

That looks ok to me.

So what would be the best way to mount the partition with read/write access?

Last edited by jonnybarnes (2011-05-16 20:31:46)

jlindgren · 2011-05-16 22:12:23

Just running fsck doesn't do any real testing for hard drive failure. Use e2sck -c.

       -c     This option causes e2fsck to use badblocks(8) program  to  do  a
              read-only  scan  of  the device in order to find any bad blocks.
              If any bad blocks are found, they are added  to  the  bad  block
              inode  to  prevent them from being allocated to a file or direc‐
              tory.  If this option is specified twice,  then  the  bad  block
              scan will be done using a non-destructive read-write test.

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-17 00:27:52

I Ctrl^C'd it because I need to turn my computer off, but surely something is wrong, this is the output:

[jonny@jonny-arch ~]$ sudo fsck.ext4 -c /dev/sdb2
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): ^C  0.10% done, 27:51 elapsed

Interrupted at block 48657
MEDIA: Updating bad block inode.

0.1% after nearly half an hour, that's ridiculously slow.

jlindgren · 2011-05-17 01:31:00

(200*1024)*0.001/(30*60) = 0.11 MB/s, about the speed of a *floppy* disk -- yes, there is definitely something wrong there.

stqn · 2011-05-17 04:22:31

badblocks (ran by e2fsck -c) is supposed to print bad blocks when it finds them, which it didn't in your case... However disk errors do cause extreme slowness in disk access... Not sure what's going on.

As ewaller suggested, install gsmartcontrol and check your disk for SMART errors. Also try using another SATA cable, plugging it into another SATA port...

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-17 08:26:38

It's weird though that I copied some files off the partition yesterday, and it seemed to take a while to start copying each file, but when they were copying 'Files' was reporting copying speeds of around 15MB/s, kind of what you'd expect from a HDD to USBHDD transfer.

So this is partition sdb2, I have partition sdb1 mounted as /var, which is also weird because my system doesn't seem slow or sluggish, but I don't really know how often /var is read or written to. If I get a new SATA cable and attach the drive to a different port, it won't become like /dev/sdc will it and thus make my system complain about having no /var folder?

Ramses de Norre · 2011-05-17 10:38:09

jonnybarnes wrote:

So this is partition sdb2, I have partition sdb1 mounted as /var, which is also weird because my system doesn't seem slow or sluggish, but I don't really know how often /var is read or written to. If I get a new SATA cable and attach the drive to a different port, it won't become like /dev/sdc will it and thus make my system complain about having no /var folder?

It might, but that's why you should always use persistent block device naming. With udev the device nodes for your partitions might also change after a reboot so you really shouldn't rely on them.

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-17 11:05:17

Ah, I use UUIDs in my fstab file to mount my partitions, namely / and /var so I should be OK. Will go out and buy a new SATA cable today.

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-17 17:10:30

OK, so I bought a new SATA cable and plugged it into a new SATA port on the MoBo. Installed gsmartcontrol, and its output didnt look too promising, entire output can be found here: http://pastebin.com/CScZ5FnV.

The most important looking section is:

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed: read failure       90%        47         39373872

What's LBA? Is this looking like a faulty drive?

stqn · 2011-05-17 18:16:50

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … addressing ; basically it's just the sector number I think.

The values in your SMART results look like they're not up to date (117 °C? That's a bit too hot ), but if it says read failure, then it looks like it's RMA time!

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-17 18:34:38

The first partition on this HDD is mounted as '/var'. How should I go about moving the var folder back across to my main SSD mounted as '/' without messing anything up?

jlindgren · 2011-05-17 19:59:36

Boot a live CD and do it from there?

jonnybarnes · 2011-05-17 22:27:42

Copied everything across with Ubuntu live CD, removed HDD, OS still seems to be running fine so I assume its allworking.

Gonna send an email to supplier now to see if I can get it replaced or something, I repeated the S.M.A.R.T test when there were no partitions of the HDD mounted and it still produced a read failure at 10%. I've only had it 5 days.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-16 16:50:25

Poor mounted partition performance

#2 2011-05-16 17:30:09

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#3 2011-05-16 18:03:35

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#4 2011-05-16 22:12:23

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#5 2011-05-17 00:27:52

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#6 2011-05-17 01:31:00

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#7 2011-05-17 04:22:31

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#8 2011-05-17 08:26:38

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#9 2011-05-17 10:38:09

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#10 2011-05-17 11:05:17

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#11 2011-05-17 17:10:30

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#12 2011-05-17 18:16:50

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#13 2011-05-17 18:34:38

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#14 2011-05-17 19:59:36

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

#15 2011-05-17 22:27:42

Re: Poor mounted partition performance

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