Re: mismatch_cnt again

Goswin von Brederlow
2009-11-09T19:13:30Z

Piergiorgio Sartor <piergiorgio.sartor@nexgo.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
>> But unless your drive firmware is broken the drive with only ever give
>> the correct data or an error. Smart has a counter for blocks that have
>> gone bad and will be fixed pending a write to them:
>> Current_Pending_Sector.
>>
>> The only way the drive should be able to give you bad data is if
>> multiple bits toggle in such a way that the ECC still fits.
>
> Not really, I've disks which are *perfect* in smart sense
> and nevertheless I had mistmatch count.
> This was a SW problem, I think now fixed, in RAID-10 code.

But that wasn't the drive giving you bad data. That was you writing
bad data in the first place. :)

> This means that, yes, there could be mismatches, without
> any warning, from other sources than disks.
> And these could be anywhere in the system.
> I already mentioned, time ago, a cabling problem which was
> leading to a similar result: wrong data on different disks,
> without any warning or error from the HW layer.
>
> That is why it is important to know *where* the mismatch
> occurs and, if possible, in which device component.
> If it is an empty part of the FS, no problem, if it
> belongs to a specific file, then it would be possible
> to restore/recreate it.

FULL ACK.

> Of course, a tool will be needed telling which file is
> using a certain block of the device.
>
> bye,

Filesystems usualy have such a tool. Worstcase write a little C
program that checks the FIBMAP of each file.

MfG
Goswin