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I noticed some corruption errors on a HDD device partition containing part of a BTRFS filesystem:

matt@ryzen3950 ~> btrfs device stats /dev/dm-2
[/dev/mapper/cryptsda1].write_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/cryptsda1].read_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/cryptsda1].flush_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/cryptsda1].corruption_errs  12
[/dev/mapper/cryptsda1].generation_errs  0

Additionally, using btrfs-scrub failed to repair the errors. Does this necessarily mean that the hard drive is failing? Should I replace this hard drive and discard it? Or, is it possible that some other issue created the corruptions and the hard drive is fine? How can I determine if the hard drive is indeed healthy?

EDIT

Inspired by rickhg12hs's comment below, I installed smartmontools and queried the device health with smartctl. I checked the device with

sudo smartctl -a -d sat /dev/sda

(replace /dev/sda with your device)

which, among other things reported

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

I then performed the extended self tests with

sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda

And later checked the result with the first command above:

$ sudo smartctl -a -d sat /dev/sda
[sudo] password for matt: 
smartctl 7.1 2020-06-01 r5062 [x86_64-linux-5.9.6] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate BarraCuda 3.5
Device Model:     ST2000DM008-2FR102
Serial Number:    ZFL0JANK
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0b61e994b
Firmware Version: 0001
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Form Factor:      3.5 inches
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Mon Jun 28 07:11:26 2021 PDT
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:  (0x00) Offline data collection activity
                                        was never started.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
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:                (    0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x73) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        No 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:        (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        ( 201) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x30a5) SCT Status supported.
                                        SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   080   046   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       194321836
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   099   098   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       37
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       1664
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   083   060   045    Pre-fail  Always       -       190898752
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   086   086   000    Old_age   Always       -       12558 (250 148 0)
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       37
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1 1 1
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   063   058   040    Old_age   Always       -       37 (Min/Max 31/42)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       492
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   094   094   000    Old_age   Always       -       13428
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   037   042   000    Old_age   Always       -       37 (0 21 0 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   083   064   000    Old_age   Always       -       194321836
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       12100h+54m+59.286s
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       29153824028
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       49954137838

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 without error       00%     12548         -

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.

So, as far as I can tell this device is completely functional. I don't know what caused the btrfs corruption errors (this is also why I haven't posted this edit as an answer).

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4
  • Does the drive have SMART capabilities?
    – rickhg12hs
    Jun 27, 2021 at 21:16
  • 1
    It does, which I had not heard of before (thanks for pointing me in that direction). I've downloaded smartmontools and am running tests.
    – MattHusz
    Jun 28, 2021 at 0:45
  • The self-tests are not that interesting, in particular if they've run long ago; the SMART attributes (which you didn't show) are. Values are normed to 100, lower is worse, values below threshold means the drive is failing. Reallocated sectors for example would cause the corruption errors.
    – dirkt
    Jun 29, 2021 at 4:05
  • @dirkt good to know. I've updated the question with the full output of smartctl. The values all seem well above threshold. Does that mean the drive should be ok?
    – MattHusz
    Jun 29, 2021 at 6:26

1 Answer 1

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You have a significant raw read error rate and seek error rate that both have been worse in the past. This indicates that the drive has trouble reading the bit patterns on the platters. While the drive can still cope most of the time due to inbuilt error correction (see Hardware ECC recovered value), it's not completely healthy.

And though the normed reallocated sector count is 100, the raw value is not zero, which means that probably in the past a few sectors got reallocated (the raw value is not standardized, so it's hard to say anything specific). That would explain your corruption errors, and BTRFS may not even have found all of these - expect a few of your files to have read errors.

So the drive is still usable, but already shows signs of wear; expect it to fail at some point in the future (usually this happens very suddenly). Don't put valuable data on it, and be sure to make backups. It's fine to use it e.g. as a system drive where you can recover by reinstalling the OS.

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