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Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,963

Website

blk_update_request I/O error but smart reports no errors

Last week while synchronizing two systems with unison, the operation failed while reporting the following error on one system:

blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdx, sector xxxxxxxxx

The disk is an internal SATA HDD. A quick search turned up posts on multiple forums including this one indicating that the disk is likely failing. I got a replacement disk and copied everything from the old disk (one primary partition via rsync, multiple LVM logical volumes via dd). No errors occurred while copying. I have since run the long test with smartctl and the system reports that the test completed without error.

What should I do with the disk? Are there other tests to try? Should I just keep using it for non-critical data and wait to see if the error re-appears?

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R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: blk_update_request I/O error but smart reports no errors

You could try using badblocks to write/read/compare and see if any errors show up.

Today I also saw some disk related problem, which had me concerned but smartctl output showed nothing to worry about, so I think I may have been bitten by the problem described here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=216716. From what I've been able to see, this might be triggered by nfs and I didn't check in which kernel this fix is present.

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R00KIE
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