So this is an old thread, but I wanted to follow up on the matter.
rockisland
sent me the drive in question and I received it today. It didn't take me long to encounter issues.
SMART shows the drive in the state shown here:
smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [FreeBSD 9.1-STABLE amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Raptor
Device Model: WDC WD1500ADFD-00NLR4
Serial Number: WD-WMAP41573589
Firmware Version: 21.07QR4
User Capacity: 150,039,945,216 bytes [150 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: ATA/ATAPI-7 published, ANSI INCITS 397-2005
Local Time is: Fri Jan 18 18:52:48 2013 PST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity
was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 4783) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 72) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x103f) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 163 160 021 Pre-fail Always - 4875
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 040 Old_age Always - 861
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000a 200 200 051 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 078 078 000 Old_age Always - 16287
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 051 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 051 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 697
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 124 102 000 Old_age Always - 23
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 051 Old_age Offline - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 2
CR = Command Register [HEX]
FR = Features Register [HEX]
SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
ER = Error register [HEX]
ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.
Error 2 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 16287 hours (678 days + 15 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was doing SMART Offline or Self-test.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 80 e0 fc 00 e0 Error: UNC 128 sectors at LBA = 0x0000fce0 = 64736
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
25 00 80 80 fc 00 40 00 00:11:24.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 00 fc 00 40 00 00:11:24.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 80 fb 00 40 00 00:11:24.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 00 fb 00 40 00 00:11:24.700 READ DMA EXT
25 00 80 80 fa 00 40 00 00:11:24.700 READ DMA EXT
Error 1 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 16270 hours (677 days + 22 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 08 97 6b 9f 40 Error: UNC 8 sectors at LBA = 0x009f6b97 = 10447767
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
25 01 08 97 6b 9f 41 00 00:00:32.250 READ DMA EXT
25 01 08 87 dc 9e 41 00 00:00:32.250 READ DMA EXT
25 01 01 4e ea a7 46 00 00:00:32.250 READ DMA EXT
25 01 01 4e ea a7 46 00 00:00:32.250 READ DMA EXT
61 01 00 ee 89 77 41 00 00:00:32.250 WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 15315 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 13596 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 12376 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 12329 -
# 5 Conveyance offline Completed without error 00% 1332 -
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
The first thing I did was attempt to zero the drive, which is the same thing rockisland
attempted to do earlier.
Within a few moments of the zeroing beginning,
I started hearing repetitive clicking coming from the drive itself. The clicking sounds like a head that's stuck repeatedly trying to re-read a sector, and not the actuator arms resetting back to track 0. I doubt rockisland
could hear this if the drive was mounted in a chassis or enclosure, but I do all of my testing with bare drives externally attached to a system (literally SATA power and SATA data cable hanging out of the case).
I Ctrl-C'd
dd
, which of course was blocked for quie some time by the kernel CAM and underlying AHCI layer since it was waiting for an I/O transaction, and the CAM timeout is 30 full seconds. During this time, I started seeing this on the console (which is to be expected):
ahcich5: Timeout on slot 0 port 0
ahcich5: is 00000000 cs 00000000 ss 00000001 rs 00000001 tfd 40 serr 00000000 cmd 0004c017
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): WRITE_FPDMA_QUEUED. ACB: 61 80 80 77 01 40 00 00 00 00 00 00
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): CAM status: Command timeout
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): Retrying command
ahcich5: AHCI reset: device not ready after 31000ms (tfd = 00000080)
ahcich5: Timeout on slot 0 port 0
ahcich5: is 00000000 cs 00000001 ss 00000000 rs 00000001 tfd 80 serr 00000000 cmd 0004c017
(aprobe0:ahcich5:0:0:0): ATA_IDENTIFY. ACB: ec 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00
(aprobe0:ahcich5:0:0:0): CAM status: Command timeout
(aprobe0:ahcich5:0:0:0): Error 5, Retry was blocked
ahcich5: AHCI reset: device not ready after 31000ms (tfd = 00000080)
ahcich5: Timeout on slot 0 port 0
ahcich5: is 00000000 cs 00000001 ss 00000000 rs 00000001 tfd 80 serr 00000000 cmd 0004c017
(aprobe0:ahcich5:0:0:0): ATA_IDENTIFY. ACB: ec 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00
(aprobe0:ahcich5:0:0:0): CAM status: Command timeout
(aprobe0:ahcich5:0:0:0): Error 5, Retry was blocked
(ada5:(pass5:ahcich5:0:ahcich5:0:0:0:0): lost device
0): passdevgonecb: devfs entry is gone
ahcich5: AHCI reset: device not ready after 31000ms (tfd = 00000080)
ahcich5: Timeout on slot 0 port 0
ahcich5: is 00000000 cs 00000001 ss 00000001 rs 00000001 tfd 80 serr 00000000 cmd 0004c017
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): WRITE_FPDMA_QUEUED. ACB: 61 80 80 77 01 40 00 00 00 00 00 00
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): CAM status: Command timeout
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): Error 5, Periph was invalidated
(ada5:ahcich5:0:0:0): removing device entry
ahcich5: AHCI reset: device not ready after 31000ms (tfd = 00000080)
A general end-user probably can't decode any of this, but it reads quite clearly to me. The drive began experiencing a physical problem of some sort (and is stil experiencing it) causing the entire SATA bus (well, this port) to lock up hard. The reason is that the underlying firmware on the drive, on this model, is apparently designed
very poorly -- it does not handle error conditions correctly.
The end result is a drive firmware itself which is stuck in an infinite loop trying to deal with the underlying physical problem (whatever that may be); the SATA controller
on the drive appears to be entirely driven by the firmware as well (this explains the deadlock, followed by the drive falling off the bus entirely -- AHCI/SATA protocol should still work despite the underlying drive going catatonic).
As I type this, the drive is still clicking away, and refuses to reappear on the bus because the firmware is downright wedged. It's been literally a full 10 minutes now, which is longer than the total amount of CAM retries and timeouts (5 retries, 30 seconds each).
I tried the god-awful trick of smacking the drive against a flat surface while operational -- this is not something I normally do, but when I hear a drive clicking like this, it's sometimes worth it to see if you can jostle the arm enough that it might unwedge or trip some other condition in the underlying firmware code. Sadly no avail -- I even heard the drive (mechanically) re-set the actuator arm but it went right back to trying to clicking. It's hell bent on trying to read that naughty LBA.
So bottom line is that there's no way to reset this drive without power-cycling it. It flat out refuses to respond to any ATA CDBs once it gets into this indefinite loop, and as such, also stops responding at the SATA protocol level. Pretty awesome; nicely designed firmware! *cough* :P
There isn't much I can do with the drive other than use it as a real-world example of how technology since the days of this drive (circa 2006) have evolved and improved. What's extra amusing is that the WD1500ADFD is a 10,000rpm Raptor drive, which is what WD toted as "reliable and fast and awesome" -- it just goes to show no matter how much money you pay, no matter what "classification" of drive you buy, what ultimately matters is whether or not the programmers of the underlying device firmware actually designed their code sanely and never to get stuck in deadlock/infinite loop situations like this one.
Attached is an .mp3 file recorded from my digital camera of the clicking in question, amplified by 8dB. :-) I do plan on opening this drive while it's in operation to see if there's some visual defect or reason I can detect for its issue.