You might assume you have a bad drive or the SATA interface/cable is bad, or the power supply is bad/weak to the drive. These are all possible issues, but definitely check your SATA cable for "twisting". It is a big issue because until the error stops or times out, your system will not boot (in my case this was the case even though the drive with the issue was not part of the OS or booting process at all). If you run an open rig that you move around often that ha........

Before getting into the output here is my typical experience with SMART, there is what I call a "bad disk" with pending and uncorrectable sectors that cannot be reallocated. It has caused a kernel panic and system crash repeatedly as we can see from the logs. But SMART says it has "PASSED" its self assessment. SMART is still useful to me but it is more about looking at Current_Pending_Sector. Any time I have had anything but 0 for that attribute it........

[ 2868.041375] ata1: EH in SWNCQ mode,QC:qc_active 0x40 sactive 0x40 [ 2868.041554] ata1: SWNCQ:qc_active 0x40 defer_bits 0x0 last_issue_tag 0x6 [ 2868.041556] dhfis 0x40 dmafis 0x40 sdbfis 0x20 [ 2868.041874] ata1: ATA_REG 0x41 ERR_REG 0x84 [ 2868.042013] ata1: tag : dhfis dmafis sdbfis sactive [ 2868.042163] ata1: tag 0x6: 1 1 0 1 [ 2868.042301] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x1 SAct 0x40 SErr 0x400000 action 0x6 frozen [........

[3805108.257042] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 1953525168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) [3805108.257052] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [3805108.257054] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 [3805108.257066] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [3805108.257083] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 1953525168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) [3805108.257090] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off........

Another new drive bad from the start: Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386779] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x280900 action 0x6 frozen Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386782] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386784] ata2: SError: { UnrecovData HostInt 10B8B BadCRC } Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386788] ata2.00: cmd 60/0........

This is just trying to read 5GB off the drive with dd and the drive initially tested ok but shortly after I wondered why I was seeing 2MB/s read speeds. Notice the "current_pending_sector", anytime I've seen it at anything above 0 even with no other bad fields/attributes, it means the drive is bad. ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x3 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED ata1.00: cmd 60/00:00:........

This is the most I can get when plugging in a hard drive hot and only on some power connectors. [71656.314271] ata5: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x90a02 action 0xe frozen [71656.314277] ata5: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed [71656.314285] ata5: SError: { RecovComm Persist HostInt PHYRdyChg 10B8B } [71656.314294] ata5: hard resetting link [71660.360686] ata5: softreset failed (device not ready) [71660.360694] ata5: applying........

Here's a proven example of what a bad hard drive can do, it was technically functioning OKin a RAID array but the system became extremely low and the load become high and IOWAIT was even higher and I always thought it was a bad application. The truth is that this failing 1TBHitachi has slowly gotten worse and caused huge slowdowns, (eg. 100% load on Thunderbird waiting for e-mails to load etc..). After swapping it out, tabs change instantly, emails are not lagged, and........

[ 12.460014] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16) [ 17.626677] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [ 22.480011] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16) [ 27.646681] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [ 38.106817] ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (INIT_DEV_PARAMS failed, err_mask=0x80) [ 48.266676] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)........

I like dd, although it only reads it, usually a read test of the entire disk will uncover if your hard drive is bad in some parts. This is a good thing to do at least once a month, a lot of times bizarre program behavior, laginess and crashing/unnmounting problems etc.. are due to a failing disc and SMART won't know it or indicate a problem: We must also remember there's never a guarantee, I've found that ever since we moved to larger and more platters per drive with 1TB drives........

I had a dying drive that smart thought until it totally disappeared was a good drive, and actually all parameters did look fine but this system was causing my system to lockup and other bad behavior: === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 Serial Number: WD-WMAZ20139 Firmware Version: 50.0AB50 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes Device........

I had one of these shipped and it was not recognized when plugged in, here's what a dead drive looks like (I assume it's teh circuit board which is dead): ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) ata1: softreset failed (device not ready) ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) ata1: link online but device misclassified, retrying ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) ata1: softreset f........

This happened during a RAID array check: SMART says both drives pass the test, but I'm doing a long test on them and hopefully this is not a hardware error. Apr 3 04:22:01 remote kernel: md: syncing RAID array md2 Apr 3 04:22:01 remote kernel: md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. Apr 3 04:22:01 remote kernel: md: using maximum available idle IO bandwidth (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. Apr........

[137392.910057] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x80000 action 0x6 frozen [137392.910077] ata4: SError: { 10B8B } [137392.910095] ata4.00: cmd 60/20:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 16384 in [137392.910099] res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [137392.910122] ata4.00: status: { DRDY } [137392.910135] ata4: hard resetting link [137393.440060] ata4: SATA link........

I separated the 2 drives in the RAID 1 array. 1 is the old one /dev/sda and is out of date, while the separated other one /dev/sdc was in another drive and mounted and used with more data (updated). I wonder how mdadm will handle this: usb-storage: device scan complete md: md127 stopped. md: bind md: md127: raid array is not clean -- starting background reconstruction raid1: raid set md127 active with 1 out of 2 m........

Let the numbers speak for themselves, from what I read the Load_Cycle_Count which is very high (more than 500,000/half a million times) is the number of head parks. What a stupid"Green" design and design flaw which will probably mean an early life for the drive. This is almost as silly as Seagate's new reputation for BSY/poor quality disks since the 7200.11 series. To make it worse this is also when Western Digital introduced "Advanced Format" o........

[27969.398749] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907029168 512-byte hardware sectors (2000399 MB) [27969.398749] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [27969.398749] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 [27969.398749] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [27972.117543] ata6.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [27972.117543] ata6.00: irq_stat 0x48000000 [27972.117543] ata6.00: cmd 60/08:00:ff:7........

This drive is clearly on the way out, the Kernel knows it but I'm surprised that SMART is not concerned. I didn't blame Seagate for their past issues until now. This hard drive has hardly been used and has not even been powered on for a year according to SMART. Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Device........

Seagate Inventory/Firmware Check I heard about this issue a long time ago but never looked into it. I figured I wasn't affected since my 500GB drives were running for so long. I've been using Seagate's since 2002 and to this day all of the drives I have are alive from Seagate. *Update the bad news is that I realize one of my 500GB's is about to die, it's not even a year old, but is also not affected by the recall according to Seagate! Seagate Inventory/Firm........

From the package "parted" you can use the command "partprobe" to re-read the partition table. I really hate rebooting, and that's what Iloved to hear about AHCI motherboards, that they allow hotswap so you don't have to reboot. But that's only as good as the OS, if the OS does not reload the partition table you won't be able to do anything with that new drive you attached without rebooting. Yes, even without re-reading the partiton table Linux will........