Identify clicking drive in array?

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ChineseStunna

Limp Gawd
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Jan 11, 2002
Messages
442
Hi all,

I've recently updated my array to 10x3TB drives in a MDADM RAID6 array but it seems like one of the drives might be on its way out. I hear clicking for a couple seconds during which time array grinds to a halt, this happens every 5-10 min. MDADM shows array is clean and healthy and smartctl reports no errors for any of the drives

I've checked /dmesg and /var/log/messages but neither has any direct indicators of a failed/failing drive, any experts have ideas on how to ID the faulty drive out of the array?

I obviously can't tell acoustically since they are all mounted in close proximity in the drive cages and the sound only comes intermittently.

Thanks!
 
Have you tried something like a dd dump of the first 8GB or so of each drive and check performance?

Code: 
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=8M count=1000

smartctl reports no errors for any of the drives
Click to expand...

Current_Pending_Sector and Offline_Uncorrectable both have raw values of 0.

Is Load_Cycle_Count low on all drives? Perhaps some drives are parking the heads after some delay.
 
Pretty simple.

iostat -x 1

look for the disk that constantly has high %util when you hear the clicking.
 
Current_Pending_Sector and Offline_Uncorrectable both are at 0 for all drives.

Load_Cycle_Count is low <10 for all drives except /dev/sdd and it already shows a reallocate count of 86 after only being up and running for a week vs. 0 for all other drives so I'm pretty confident it's this one.

Thanks for the guidance!
 
Last edited:
drescherjm said:
Have you tried something like a dd dump of the first 8GB or so of each drive and check performance?

Code: 
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=8M count=1000



Current_Pending_Sector and Offline_Uncorrectable both have raw values of 0.

Is Load_Cycle_Count low on all drives? Perhaps some drives are parking the heads after some delay.
Click to expand...

I think I've found the disk per my last post, but I doubt it's due to the delay as the drives are running full tilt right now sync data back to my workstation. I haven't heard it for the past hour or so, weird.
 
You can also look into the dmesg output whether there are any error messages. In fact, this is the first thing I do on all Linux or Unix-related systems in case of problems.
 
In fact, this is the first thing I do on all Linux or Unix-related systems in case of problems.
Click to expand...

Same for me. The OP mentioned that there was nothing suspicious in the dmesg in the first post.
 
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