Toni writes: > > > > Is Maxtorman correct about the 320 log entries? > > > My dealer told me a similar story, but I don't know where he had it > > > from. > > > > I guess the next step is to find out if Maxtorman is correct about this > > 320 log entries stuff, and if the SMART log entries as reported by > > smartmontools is the log to worry about, or if there is some other log. > > I don't have an account on /., and also feel incapable of actually > working on this problem, but someone who has and can, could probably > try to nag maxtorman about improving smartmontools to the point that > they do the right thing, or try to get him to connect one to somebody > else who can verify the issue and/or provide more technical details. > > If he can find a way to almost-anonymously post to /., he might be able > to give some hints to the smartmontools gyus, too. Then, we only need > them to integrate everything and make a new release.
It is easy to set up a slashdot account. Or you can post as "anonymous coward". He set up the Maxtorman account to post anonymously, he mentioned that he has another slashdot account that isn't anonymous. Problem I have is I can't find a way to send him a PM (private message). Most web forums have a facility for sending other users a PM. We can post a reply to the thread, but he would have to read the thread again to see it. Any slashdot wizards out there have an idea? Your suggestion of smartmontools is helpful, thank you. > Personally, I'd say that it'd be best if Seagate themselves would grab > the opportunity to partially make good on the issue, but I heavily > doubt that they "understand", or want to understand, what's it about > with FLOSS. It isn't even just FLOSS. Any non-x86 machine is out of luck. Proprietary Unix is out of luck. Anything embedded is out of luck. Even Mac is probably out of luck. And if the reboot to run the firmware installer bricks the drive(s) even wintel is out of luck. I don't understand the common corporate policy of keeping everything secret. All they are doing is hurting their previously loyal customers. It didn't used to be this way. Supposedly there was a broken test machine that didn't zero out some special area after writing a test pattern. So only drives that were tested on that machine are at risk. If we can find out what area this is (I assume it isn't in the normal space used for user storage) and how to zero it (if not already zero) there is no need to update the firmware. ---------- Raimo writes: > How can I know if I have a suspicious drive? Good question. Seagate has some web page that supposedly will tell you, but of course it is broken and doesn't work with all browsers. > Google for ST3808110AS gives me "Barracuda 7200.9 SATA 80-GB Hard Drive", > so I guess this one is not suspicious, but I have more disks, > in other servers. What if i find a 7200.10, 7200.11, ES or ES.2, > is that enough for me to suspect it? I haven't read anything about problems with 7200.10 or earlier. Toni reports that ES and ES.2 may be affected. ---------- Glenn writes: > Just a hypothetical situation, since we do not have the sourcecode of > the firmware: isn't it possible some kind of mathematical operation > is occuring on the number of log entries causing some kind of infinite > loop to occur or a division that leads to/by 0 that the software/hardware > is unable to handle? That could mean this problem could also manifest > itself on for example multiples of 320, so just putting the counter on > 321 may just be delaying the inevitable. And what happens if the counter > overflows and reaches 320 again? >From what I've read it sounds like the counter must be exactly 320 AND some location must have a test pattern rather than zero when you init (power up or reboot) the drive. From Maxtorman's description, the log is circular, so it will eventually wrap around to 320 again. So keeping the counter away from 320 is an okay short term workaround, but long term we want to either zero out the magic location or update the firmware. ---------- matheus writes: > but I also heard of new firmwares being worse than old > ones, from seagate first try to fix things. What I read is that the firmware itself was ok but the installer program would brick a previously working drive. But it didn't brick it as badly as the firmware bug, you can still update the firmware again once you get a proper update program. =============== There is supposed to be some document that explains all this, with enough details to create a fix. If anyone finds this document I need a copy please. If you have one or more of the suspect drives, if it running, try to keep it running and don't reboot. If it is powered down leave it powered down if possible until this all gets sorted out.
