I/O error on Samsung HD501LJ

[Paul Atreides]

Hi,

I've assembled a PC last summer on a ASUS P5B Deluxe MoBo. 4 Samsung
HD501LJ are connected to the Intel controller. The RAID is enable at the
BIOS level and the proper driver is installed under XP (Intel ICH8R SATA
RAID Controller 7.6.0.1011) but no raid is configured on the disks
working in AHCI mode).

My first drive has started to show a problem today when accessing a
certain file and produces some clicks before displaying I/O error (under
ROBOCOPY) but with explorer, everything freezes, as this same disk has
the OS on its first partition. This first drive has a first 8 GB NTFS
bootable XP SP2 partition wich is OK. The second partition is a
TrueCrypt volume on wich is located this file.

I guess that there's a defective sector/track.

Using SpeedFan SMART online analysis, everything appears OK, Normal,
very Good except:

Current Pending Sector 100 1 Watch
Warning: Current Pending Sector is below the average limits (253-253).

Could this be related to the problem ?

It also says:

The average temperature for this hard disk is 32C (MIN=22C MAX=42C) and
yours is 27C.
The overall fitness for this drive is 90%.
The overall performance for this drive is 90%.

I have already ordered a spare HD (I have no warranty on that one) but I
think I could probably continue using this one if the defective
sectors/tracks could be flagged as bad.

I though this would be automatic but it seems it's not. What do I have
to do to fix this problem ?

TIA.

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi,

I've assembled a PC last summer on a ASUS P5B Deluxe MoBo. 4 Samsung
HD501LJ are connected to the Intel controller. The RAID is enable at
the BIOS level and the proper driver is installed under XP (Intel
ICH8R SATA RAID Controller 7.6.0.1011) but no raid is configured on
the disks working in AHCI mode).

My first drive has started to show a problem today when accessing a
certain file and produces some clicks before displaying I/O error
(under ROBOCOPY) but with explorer, everything freezes, as this same
disk has the OS on its first partition. This first drive has a first
8 GB NTFS bootable XP SP2 partition wich is OK. The second partition
is a TrueCrypt volume on wich is located this file.

I guess that there's a defective sector/track.

Using SpeedFan SMART online analysis, everything appears OK, Normal,
very Good except:

Could this be related to the problem ?

Yes, it could well be the whole of the problem.

It also says:

Thats a rather silly comment, the temperature is fine.

Just numbers plucked out of someone's arse.

I have already ordered a spare HD (I have no warranty on that one)
but I think I could probably continue using this one if the defective
sectors/tracks could be flagged as bad.

Its better to get the drive to remap that sector away.

I though this would be automatic but it seems it's not.
What do I have to do to fix this problem ?

Overwrite the file which has that sector in it.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

I've assembled a PC last summer on a ASUS P5B Deluxe MoBo. 4 Samsung
HD501LJ are connected to the Intel controller. The RAID is enable at the
BIOS level and the proper driver is installed under XP (Intel ICH8R SATA
RAID Controller 7.6.0.1011) but no raid is configured on the disks
working in AHCI mode).

My first drive has started to show a problem today when accessing a
certain file and produces some clicks before displaying I/O error (under
ROBOCOPY) but with explorer, everything freezes, as this same disk has
the OS on its first partition. This first drive has a first 8 GB NTFS
bootable XP SP2 partition wich is OK. The second partition is a
TrueCrypt volume on wich is located this file.

I guess that there's a defective sector/track.

Using SpeedFan SMART online analysis, everything appears OK, Normal,
very Good except:

Could this be related to the problem ?

It is. The pending sector is one where reading failed and has not
succeeded so far. This does not even mean that the sectro has to be
defect. There could also have been an incident (power spike, mecanical
impact) when it was written.

It also says:

Forget these percentages. They are meaningless. They are an
attempt to help the user to interprete the data, but percentages
do not cut it when describing a HDD's health.

I have already ordered a spare HD (I have no warranty on that one) but I
think I could probably continue using this one if the defective
sectors/tracks could be flagged as bad.

I though this would be automatic but it seems it's not. What do I have
to do to fix this problem ?

Several points:

1) This disk does not necessarily have a problem. The (rare) additional
defective sector can happen on a healthy (consumer-grade) disk,
especially if some areas of the disk were not cheched for a long
time. Checks can be done in three ways: a) automatic offline
data collection b) explicit long SMART selftests c) reading of the
whole disk. The first variant needs to be enabled once and then
works automatically. The other two need to be done explicitely.
I run variant b) on my internal disks automatically every 14 days.

Side note: It is even possible, that this is not the disks
fault, but a reasult of vibration or a power-spike.

Side note: Automatic self-checking was turned off on all
consumer-grade disks I have bought so far, but can be turned
on with, e.g., the smartmontools.

2) You need more diagnostics to judge the disk's health. Run
a long SMART selftest (e.g. with the smartmontools) and
look at the attributes again.

3) Automatic reallocation is triggered by either a successful read
of the problematic sector or by overwriting it.

Arno

 

[Odiferous]

Hi,

I've assembled a PC last summer on a ASUS P5B Deluxe MoBo. 4 Samsung
HD501LJ are connected to the Intel controller. The RAID is enable at the
BIOS level and the proper driver is installed under XP (Intel ICH8R SATA
RAID Controller 7.6.0.1011) but no raid is configured on the disks
working in AHCI mode).

My first drive has started to show a problem today when accessing a
certain file and produces some clicks before displaying I/O error (under
ROBOCOPY) but with explorer, everything freezes, as this same disk has
the OS on its first partition. This first drive has a first 8 GB NTFS
bootable XP SP2 partition wich is OK. The second partition is a
TrueCrypt volume on wich is located this file.

I guess that there's a defective sector/track.

Using SpeedFan SMART online analysis, everything appears OK, Normal,
very Good except:


Could this be related to the problem ?

It also says:


I have already ordered a spare HD (I have no warranty on that one) but I
think I could probably continue using this one if the defective
sectors/tracks could be flagged as bad.

I though this would be automatic but it seems it's not. What do I have
to do to fix this problem ?

TIA.

I have encountered many anomalies with this drive and its SATA-II
interface.

Although it is the drive I recommend above all others, it does sometimes
need to be forced to SATA-I speeds of 1.5Gb/s with a number of
interfaces.

It may not be the issue here, but it's worth a try.

The Samsung utility can be downloaded - it's a quick flash.


Duncan

 

[Paul Atreides]

Hi All,

Not sure if it was the file itself, but just trying to "right click"
(under XP Explorer) on its name froze the whole PC. I've deleted the
parent folder (I made a copy on another disk minus the damaged files)
and copied back the folder tree without problem. All the subfolders,
about a dozen, had .md5 and .sfv checksum files for their content. The
copy (it was in fact a move when the problem appeared) of one complete
subfolders files failed and another one had about 6 files out of 30 with
checksum errors. I'll probably never do a move again, but a copy then
delete if the copy is OK.

I restarted the PC with UBCD4WIN and tried a chkdsk but stopped it as I
didn't want to have the computer running the whole night in my bedroom
(it took more than 5 hours to copy its content to another disk). I'll do
that soon with a smartmontools test, after the OS and data partitions
will be transfered to another new disk.

The disk has been recently formatted using TrueCrypt volume creation
wizard (in which case every sector is written) so the event was only a
few days old.

Thank you for your valuable explanations.

 

[ocotber]

I have encountered many anomalies with this drive and its SATA-II
interface.

Although it is the drive I recommend above all others, it does sometimes
need to be forced to SATA-I speeds of 1.5Gb/s with a number of
interfaces.

It may not be the issue here, but it's worth a try.

The Samsung utility can be downloaded - it's a quick flash.


Duncan
--
Retrodata
www.retrodata.co.uk
Globally Local Data Recovery Experts

===============================

odie

that info is new to me - i use samsungs all the time hence my interest

so are you saying - forcing it to SATA-I is a safer option ?

not fussed on the speed front so SATA-I is ok for me

i'll have to check the samsung site for the utility

 

[ocotber]

I have encountered many anomalies with this drive and its SATA-II
interface.

Although it is the drive I recommend above all others, it does sometimes
need to be forced to SATA-I speeds of 1.5Gb/s with a number of
interfaces.

It may not be the issue here, but it's worth a try.

The Samsung utility can be downloaded - it's a quick flash.


Duncan
--
Retrodata
www.retrodata.co.uk
Globally Local Data Recovery Experts

===============================

odie

that info is new to me - i use samsungs all the time hence my interest

so are you saying - forcing it to SATA-I is a safer option ?

not fussed on the speed front so SATA-I is ok for me

i'll have to check the samsung site for the utility


=============================


found this :-

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqList.do

mentiosn the flash to 1.5 like you said

also an option of a jumper but i think its only for some models

think i'll flash mine to be honest