Please help in diagnosing these smartmon messages

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Andrew Falanga
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 7:15 PM
> To: FreeBSD Questions
> Subject: Please help in diagnosing these smartmon messages
> 
> 
> HI,
> 
> I just installed smartmontools from ports on my churches system 
> and I think 
> I'm glad I did.  However, not being completely familiar with it, I'd like 
> some help with the messages (and errors) that have been 
> discovered thus far 
> (since I installed it on Saturday, yikes!).
> 
> First was this, and it's repeated in the log /var/log/messages frequently:
> 
> Feb  4 18:19:44 whitbap smartd[64783]: Device: /dev/ad0, 12 Currently 
> unreadable (pending) sectors
> 
> 
> Even though this entry comes from today, this was e-mailed to me 
> within hours 
> of enabling smartd on Saturday.  I understand what sectors are and I know 
> what unreadable is.  I was wondering what "pending" meant.
> 
> Then, yesterday I was e-mailed this one:
> 
> Feb  3 02:49:44 whitbap smartd[64783]: Device: /dev/ad0, 
> Self-Test Log error 
> count increased from 0 to 1
> 
> Using smartctl I found that option "-l" with the argument 
> "selftest" would 
> give me more information.  This is what I found:
> 
> whitbap# smartctl -l selftest /dev/ad0
> smartctl version 5.37 [i386-portbld-freebsd6.2] Copyright (C) 
> 2002-6 Bruce 
> Allen
> Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
> 
> === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
> 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       70%     
> 60397         
> 67413
> # 2  Short offline       Completed: read failure       70%     
> 60373         
> 67413
> 
> 
> I know it's probably near impossible to know exactly how much longer this 
> drive has, but how serious are these errors?  As I mentioned, the 
> unreadable 
> sectors on the hard drive are repeated many times in the log ( > 
> 100 times).
> 

It means replace the drive immediately.

Ted