UDMA Errors - Existing Data Affected?

[nicky9499]

Hi all,

Right to the point; I recently checked in on my shared storage PC and noticed UDMA errors on two Seagate drives (ST4000DM000-1F2168) with values of 32 and 16380 respectively. It was caused by a faulty cable and the errors stopped climbing after a new one was swapped in. I have noticed the occasional corrupted old JPEG and MP3s skipping etc.

1. There is a probability something else corrupted the files as they were also found on other drives with no UDMA errors but in the event of a future UDMA error are hard drives able to correct it automatically in a similar manner to bad sector recovery?

2. If no, will using ECC RAM prevent or correct such errors?

 

[wwenze]

UDMA CRC errors are... well... CRC errors detected while reading/writing drives. So it is caused by the cable; drive hardware errors and even RAM errors can cause them too but unlikely to be in this case. ECC RAM will not fix the issue since this is a defect causing abnormal operation.

When a CRC error is detected by the receiving device, it will tell the transmitting device to resend the packet. This goes on until a good data is received.

Note that this is talking about the CRC at the SATA connection only - having no CRC error here means the data is successfully transmitted. If the data stored in the drive is corrupt, it can still get transmitted without CRC errors, but it appears corrupted to the program.

 

[jtjt00]

Look like your Seagate HDD is going up lorry.

 

[nicky9499]

When a CRC error is detected by the receiving device, it will tell the transmitting device to resend the packet. This goes on until a good data is received.

This is what I was looking for, thank you. Meant the corruption on some old files was due to some other thing.

 

[yusoffb01]

I had that error on 4TB seagate 2 years ago. I quickly copied things out and in the end, it had 30k bad sectors.

UDMA error is just the beginning of your nightmare

 

[nicky9499]

Thanks for the head-ups mate. I've had bad experiences with Seagate from many years ago and even these days they're only used for backup so it's not that serious.

Just curious though, how did your problems escalate? At present HD Tune is showing no bad sectors or errors other than UDMA which is just communication problems and not actual failures in the drive. These errors have also stopped after I changed to a new cable.

 

[yusoffb01]

Thanks for the head-ups mate. I've had bad experiences with Seagate from many years ago and even these days they're only used for backup so it's not that serious.

Just curious though, how did your problems escalate? At present HD Tune is showing no bad sectors or errors other than UDMA which is just communication problems and not actual failures in the drive. These errors have also stopped after I changed to a new cable.

The SMART value for bad/pending sectors don't update unless you try to read from the bad sector.

31,524 bad sectors. It was 0 before I tried copying. It is used as backup drive. less than 100 hours over 2 years. Same model as your 4tb made in china seagate. ST4000DM000-1F2168

 

[nicky9499]

Thanks for the info, will take the necessary precautions. Not much has changed with Seagate from the 7200.11 days it seems.