From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from cuda.sgi.com (cuda1.sgi.com [192.48.157.11]) by oss.sgi.com (8.14.3/8.14.3/SuSE Linux 0.8) with ESMTP id p2IFuvnA042587 for ; Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:57:02 -0500 Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cuda.sgi.com (Spam Firewall) with ESMTP id 2C81DB01D20 for ; Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:59:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de (moutng.kundenserver.de [212.227.126.187]) by cuda.sgi.com with ESMTP id BMDR8eSdeox0SmD8 for ; Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:59:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Arnd Bergmann Subject: Re: 2.6.38: XFS/USB/HW issue, or failing USB stick? Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:59:46 +0100 References: <30463798-7ACB-4248-8CDC-CEFCB6ABC0BE@moocowproductions.org> In-Reply-To: <30463798-7ACB-4248-8CDC-CEFCB6ABC0BE@moocowproductions.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <201103181659.46558.arnd@arndb.de> List-Id: XFS Filesystem from SGI List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: xfs-bounces@oss.sgi.com Errors-To: xfs-bounces@oss.sgi.com To: Tim Soderstrom Cc: Alan Piszcz , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-usb@vger.kernel.org, Justin Piszcz , xfs@oss.sgi.com On Friday 18 March 2011, Tim Soderstrom wrote: > > > > However, after some amount of time, the errors occur below, is this USB > > stick failing? Since it has no SMART, is there any other way to verify > > the 'health' of a USB stick? > > What prompted you to go with XFS over, say, ext2? The journal will generally > cause quite a bit more writes onto your USB device. I use ext2 on my CF card > in my NAS for that reason (the spinning media is on XFS of course). I know > that's not an answer to your problem but thought I would add it as a suggestion :) Using ext2 on flash media instead of ext3 or other file systems is recommended a lot, but the situation is actually much more complex. In https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/, I explain how these things work under the cover. For a drive that can only have very few erase blocks open, using a journaled file system will always mean thrashing, but for drives with more open erase blocks, it's probably better to use a journal than not. I still need to do simulations to figure out how this exactly ends up on various file systems, and I had not considered XFS so far. Getting back to the rogiinal question, I'd recommend testing the stick by doing raw accesses instead of a file system. A simple dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/zero iflag=direct bs=4M will read the entire stick and report any errors. The corresponding dd of=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX oflag=direct bs=4M writes the entire stick. Some media won't report errors on write, though, so this might not help you at all. I'm also interested in results from flashbench (git://git.linaro.org/people/arnd/flashbench.git, e.g. like http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/flashbench-results/2011-March/000039.html) That might help explain how the stick failed. Arnd Arnd _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list xfs@oss.sgi.com http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs