Bad drive?

[rvassar]

I picked up a Seagate Ironwolf 4Tb ST4000VN008, hoping to rotate the last HGST 2Tb drive (45k hours!) out of my archive pool. I was going to try doing burn-in in a hotswap enclosure on my NAS, but when I insert it, it fails to train in. The console emits:

Code:

(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE. ACB: ef 03 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 46 00
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): CAM status: ATA Status Error
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): ATA status: 51 (DRDY SERV ERR), error: 04 (ABRT )
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): RES: 51 04 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 46 00
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): Retrying command
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE. ACB: ef 03 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 46 00
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): CAM status: ATA Status Error
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): ATA status: 51 (DRDY SERV ERR), error: 04 (ABRT )
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): RES: 51 04 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 46 00
(aprobe0:ahcich3:0:0:0): Error 5, Retries exhausted

So I pulled it and put it in a USB 3.0 enclosure and attached it to a Linux machine, and promptly ended up in Seagate ATA / USB passthru purgatory. I can't seem to even label the drive with a partition table. Gparted fails completely. I can however, run "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=1024" against the raw device, and the drive behaves like it's writing data. Running "badblocks -e 1 -v -o -s -w /dev/sdX" however blows up immediately.

On Edit: Forgot to add... It refuses to run a SMART test in the USB enclosure. I do not usually have problems with this USB enclosure, but I also haven't bought a Seagate drive in 15+ years...

I wanted to see if anyone here had any advice, or should I just RMA it immediately.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Assuming you have swapped SAS cables and power cords, I would say that drive sounds like it is NFG to me (No freaking good)!

 

[rvassar]

Assuming you have swapped SAS cables and power cords, I would say that drive sounds like it is NFG to me (No freaking good)!

I have multiple hot-swap trays, and got failures in two before moving to the USB enclosure. So three separate failure paths in total. The USB enclosure has been used to burn-in three other drives, so I tend to have at least a little trust in it. I was hoping to avoid it because it's slow. But there is a Seagate ATA / USB passthru bug that pop'ed up in Linux 4.1x, and I have not tested with this specific kernel.

But that shouldn't affect the BSD kernel, so I went ahead and RMA'ed it. Replacement arrives Thursday.

 

[rvassar]

Follow up... @Elliot Dierksen called it. Drive was NFG. Replacement arrived a few minutes ago and went directly in to the USB enclosure. Full SMART report, passed a short test, and is running badblocks.

Amusingly, since I ordered this from that large retailer in the pacific northwest, I made use of the free return option at my local Kohl's. They gave me a 25% one time coupon for using them for the return. My wife tasked me with picking up a $300 kitchen appliance, and gave me a stack of gift cards she'd accumulated... Kohl's gave me $40 in 'Kohl's cash' back, so between the 25% coupon and that, I saved more on the appliance than the cost of the 4Tb drive.