Catatonic hard drive

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

David Kramer wrote, On 01/18/2005 12:05 AM:
> dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote, On 01/17/2005 08:56 PM:
> 
>> On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 06:19:34PM -0500, David Kramer wrote:
>>
>>> So I was sitting by my SuSE 9.0 server today checking my mail, and 
>>> every few minutes or so I kept hearing that sound of the hard drive 
>>> spinning up.
>>>
>>> There are two possibilities, as I see it.  Either my hard drive is 
>>> about to go, or it's configured to sleep when it shouldn't (being a 
>>> server that's on 24/7).  Of course we all know that the more painful 
>>> option is likely to be the correct one, so I'm off to by a hard drive 
>>> while my system is backing up to my external USB drive.
>>>
>>> - Am I missing any possibilities?
>>
>>
>>
>> One. You could be hearing a thermal recalibration. Have you been
>> running smartmontools to check the status of the drive?
> 
> 
> No!  I thought I had that running.  I do now, and set to email both me 
> and my cellphone on error.  Thanks.

So I've been running it since then, and have seen the following:
./messages:Jan 17 23:59:46 uni smartd[13945]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART 
Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 100 to 200
./messages:Jan 18 04:29:46 uni smartd[13945]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART 
Prefailure Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate changed from 100 to 200
./messages:Jan 18 14:59:47 uni smartd[13945]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART 
Prefailure Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate changed from 200 to 100
./messages:Jan 18 22:29:47 uni smartd[13945]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART 
Prefailure Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate changed from 100 to 200

I can't find a section of the webpage that indicates the severity or meaning 
of the messages it produces.  Can you give me an idea what these mean?


After going through the man page again at an hour in the double digits instead 
of the single digits, I've expanded my smartd.conf to:

/dev/hda -a -o on -S on -m david at thekramers.net,davecell at thekramers.net -M 
test -M diminishing

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
DDDD   David Kramer         david at thekramers.net       http://thekramers.net
DK KD
DKK D  "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.
DK KD  Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute.
DDDD   That is relativity."                                - Albert Einstein