Large File to USB_DRIVE_A-1

[xor]

You need to mount /dev/sdc1 so you can check the i-nodes. (use google to learn how mount works, i.e. Search for Mount)

However after rethinking the problem, i-nodes is probably not the problem, You normally would get another more desciptive error message.

Even if i-nodes is the problem, you can't just change the file system to increase i-nodes. To have more i-nodes the filesystem has to be re-created with mkfs, which means you have to remove/backup all your data first or it will be lost.

It is possible that the drive is failing or close to complete failure.
I would look to backup all your data that you want to preserve from that drive immediately before you do anymore twiddling of the disk.

A rare but indicative symptom of failure for modern drives is the inability to actually use the entire drive even though it seems you have enough free space to complete an operation.

[nuke12]

I have no idea what the actual drive is? Perhaps it would be best, if it was the only connected drive in the computer and then there would be no mix up?

Ok, some Linux basics. Drives are called "/dev/sda", "/dev/sdb", "/dev/sdc", "/dev/sda" etc.

Partitions on the "/dev/sda" hard drive are called "/dev/sda1", "/dev/sda2", "/dev/sda3", "/dev/sda4" etc.

So if your PCH drive was the only hard drive in the computer it should show up as "/dev/sda"

The A-110 hard drive has three partitions. The last partition, "/dev/sda3" is the user's data partition.

The thing is, before you can get a reading, of the i-nodes, you have to mount the partition.

In the shell (terminal) you would type;

Code:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda3 /mnt
df -hi /dev/sda3
umount /mnt

[xor]

I would back up the data you want to preserve first.

[Beauty555]

(11-11-2010 01:34 PM)xor Wrote:  A rare but indicative symptom of failure for modern drives is the inability to actually use the entire drive even though it seems you have enough free space to complete an operation.

Can anybody tell me how it is possible that I can do the following steps with the USB_DRIVE_A-1:
1) I can't copy a 28 Gb M2TS file to the USB_DRIVE_A-1 because then windows explorer says there is not enough place for it
2) But it is possible to copy 5 times a 8 Gb WMV files (40 Gb in total) to the USB_DRIVE_A-1
3) I delete the 5 times 8 Gb files (40 Gb) from the USB_DRIVE_A-1 again
4) But still the 28 Gb M2TS file can't be copied

[nuke12]

Well, I don't have an answer for you.

It does suggest, it's not an i-node problem. 5 small files would use 5 i-nodes, where as the large file would only use 1 i-node. You did a file system check and it came up good, so I don't know

I guess that if it were my drive, I would run badblocks on the drive and see what it says. What ever, I would do like Xor says and get the data off first and then you have no worries. The good news is you can still read the drive. I assure you, things could be much worse.

[xor]

(11-11-2010 04:55 PM)nuke12 Wrote:  Well, I don't have an answer for you.

It does suggest, it's not an i-node problem. 5 small files would use 5 i-nodes, where as the large file would only use 1 i-node. You did a file system check and it came up good, so I don't know

I guess that if it were my drive, I would run badblocks on the drive and see what it says. What ever, I would do like Xor says and get the data off first and then you have no worries. The good news is you can still read the drive. I assure you, things could be much worse.

A side effect of running badblocks on modern drives(i.e. S.M.A.R.T drives) is it actually does not do what it was designed to do, instead if anything it actually will cause a drive to fail sooner. badblocks does not actually find bad blocks until it is too late. Modern drives reallocate sectors on the fly until they run out of spares. Once they run out of spares then badblocks might find something, but by then it is too late, the drive is useless.

There are actual tools to use on new (S.M.A.R.T) drives, except they do not work in USB type enclosures.

Bottom line, backup your data first before twiddling with the drive more.

[nuke12]

(11-11-2010 06:28 PM)xor Wrote:  A side effect of running badblocks on modern drives(i.e. S.M.A.R.T drives) is it actually does not do what it was designed to do, instead if anything it actually will cause a drive to fail sooner. badblocks does not actually find bad blocks until it is too late. Modern drives reallocate sectors on the fly until they run out of spares. Once they run out of spares then badblocks might find something, but by then it is too late, the drive is useless.

Did we not talk about this before? I suggested to the OP to backup the drive. After that I would give it hell. Badblocks will find bad blocks if the drive has used up all it's spares. It will also find other weakness in the drive. I would rather find out now that the drive is bad then think it is ok and then have it fail. In warranty or out of warranty, I want to know.

(11-11-2010 06:28 PM)xor Wrote:  There are actual tools to use on new (S.M.A.R.T) drives, except they do not work in USB type enclosures.

SMART is ok, but mfgs lie using SMART. They will many times hide things if you solely depend on SMART. One lie, I've found is the amount of hours the drive has run. Normally this happens after the warranty is over and SMART says the drive is about to die. I've run that same drive for 2 years past the dead date but after testing with other utilities.

Badblocks is an excellent test of a hard drives. I use both the destructive and non-destructive write tests. I also use SMART and see what it says.

When your in a war, you use the tools, you have, but always backup.

[xor]

(11-11-2010 09:36 PM)nuke12 Wrote:  Did we not talk about this before? I suggested to the OP to backup the drive. After that I would give it hell. Badblocks will find bad blocks if the drive has used up all it's spares. It will also find other weakness in the drive. I would rather find out now that the drive is bad then think it is ok and then have it fail. In warranty or out of warranty, I want to know.

(11-11-2010 06:28 PM)xor Wrote:  There are actual tools to use on new (S.M.A.R.T) drives, except they do not work in USB type enclosures.

SMART is ok, but mfgs lie using SMART. They will many times hide things if you solely depend on SMART. One lie, I've found is the amount of hours the drive has run. Normally this happens after the warranty is over and SMART says the drive is about to die. I've run that same drive for 2 years past the dead date but after testing with other utilities.

Badblocks is an excellent test of a hard drives. I use both the destructive and non-destructive write tests. I also use SMART and see what it says.

When your in a war, you use the tools, you have, but always backup.

I must have missed(and still miss) where you said backup first *before* running badblocks. Yes we did touch on this before, and I still contend that badblocks is worthless and only causes a disk to fail sooner.

[nuke12]

Still thinking on this, I have a very good example of this here, right now.

This is a badblocks output after running on the same drive 3 times and it finding 100's of bad blocks. Now it only sees 17 bad blocks but it forced the drive to map out the rest. The current 17 will not go away.

Quote:badblocks -v /dev/sda 286461920 286461700
Checking blocks 286461700 to 286461920
Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 286461888461888/ 286461920
286461904461904/ 286461920
286461905461905/ 286461920
286461906461906/ 286461920
286461907461907/ 286461920
286461908
286461909
286461910
286461911
286461912
286461913
286461914
286461915
286461916
286461917
286461918
286461919
done
Pass completed, 17 bad blocks found.

Ok, here is the same drive running SMART 3 times to look for bad blocks and this is the full output from SMART on the same drive;

Code:

smartctl version 5.36 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0
Serial Number:    WD-WMAUR0307997
Firmware Version: 01.00101
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Thu Nov 11 16:54:18 2010 UCT
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:      ( 121) The previous self-test completed having
                                        the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                 (30300) 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:        ( 255) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.

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     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   161   152   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       13908
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       114
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1761
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       54
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       38
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   198   198   000    Old_age   Always       -       8272
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   115   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       37
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       7
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       5
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       355967
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%      1762         572918952
# 2  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%      1758         572918952
# 3  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%      1744         572918952
# 3  Short offline       Completed without error       00%        61         -

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.

You should notice two things in this report;

Code:

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

Code:

# 1  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%      1762         572918952
# 2  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%      1758         572918952
# 3  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%      1744         572918952

Now, would you trust this drive? I have 17 bad blocks that won't go away but SMART still says the drive "PASSED" ok.

[xor]

Your smart tool is broken with respect to reading the proprietary information that the manufacturer has embedded in the drive. Why do you think that the linux driver knows everything about all vendors smart drive status, why is that the vendor is lying instead of the tool is not sufficient.

btw, this thread is hijacked. I am partly responsible for that happening. I should not fall into that behavior.

For the OP, backup your data. I'm suspicious of the the drive, also don't waste your time with badblocks, it does not fix anything.

[nuke12]

(11-11-2010 10:29 PM)xor Wrote:  Your smart tool is broken with respect to reading the proprietary information that the manufacturer has embedded in the drive. Why do you think that the linux driver knows everything about all vendors smart drive status, why is that the vendor is lying instead of the tool is not sufficient.

btw, this thread is hijacked. I am partly responsible for that happening. I should not fall into that behavior.

For the OP, backup your data. I'm suspicious of the the drive, also don't waste your time with badblocks, it does not fix anything.

Of course the Linux smartctl tool does not know everything. Use the mfg's software to read all the possible SMART values. The reason for this is SMART is only a semi-standard. Different mfgs have non-standard entries. I did say;

Quote:When your in a war, you use the tools, you have, but always backup.

You claim badblocks can cause your drive to fail. I think that is a good thing. If badblocks can cause it to fail, then it will fail with normal usage.

We do agree on one thing. Backup up the drive, before it is too late.

[xor]

(11-11-2010 10:54 PM)nuke12 Wrote:  Of course the Linux smartctl tool does not know everything. Use the mfg's software to read all that is possible SMART values. The reason for this is SMART is only a semi-standard. Different mfgs have non-standard entries. I did say;

Quote:When your in a war, you use the tools, you have, but always backup.

You claim badblocks can cause your drive to fail. I think that is a good thing. If badblocks can cause it to fail, then it will fail with normal usage.

We do agree on one thing. Backup up the drive, before it is too late.

Backups are good. badblocks is a worthless pile of stinking fertilizer.

[nuke12]

I'm out of here. I can't be bothered.

[Beauty555]

I fixed my problem.

1) Maked a backup of all the software on the Disk
2) Format the Disk
3) Copied the large file to the Disk
4) Copied the backup also back to the Disk


Thanks for all the help and suggestions !