Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 16:57:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>
To: Manish Lachwani <manish@Zambeel.com>
cc: "'Rod.VanMeter@nokia.com'" <Rod.VanMeter@nokia.com>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Subject: RE: Early determinition of bad sectors and correcting them ...
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Not all ECC errors are related to the actual sector of data.
Many are related to the actually ECC ckecksum and provide one does not
have a failure of more that 3 bits contigious or a max of 15 bits total
for the data and ECC data for the given sector it should be okay.

The simple fact is all drives have errors and execute ECC recovery.

One of the ways I was looking to determine if this activity was excess
would be to use micro second timers for transaction returns.  The
statistics generated would provide a gauge of the state of the drive and
the quality of the media.

I will consider looking into this later in the future, at this time I have
over issues to resolve.

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group


On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Manish Lachwani wrote:

> Yes, you are right abt taking different factors into account especially
> queuing before making a decision abt the threshold. However, I was actually
> referring to disks only. 
> 
> I have actually written a scrubber that traverses the disk and if it
> encounters a problem with the medium, it tries to get the sector remapped.
> However, the problem with the scrubber is that it will have to traverse all
> the disks in a subsystem. The amount of time it takes to traverse each disk
> is long depending on the size of the disk. We also have to make sure that
> the scrubber process does not take too much CPU when running. 
> 
> Hence if the scrubber traverses accross the disk, it is possible that a
> problem occurs on a sector that the scrubber passed. Then we will have to
> wait for the scrubber to restart the read. 
> 
> Most of the disks support an operating temperature of 60C. However, if we
> are operating at higher temperatures that result in long reads (due to shaky
> medium at higher temperatures), this facility is good. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rod.VanMeter@nokia.com [mailto:Rod.VanMeter@nokia.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 3:54 PM
> To: manish@zambeel.com; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org;
> alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
> Subject: RE: Early determinition of bad sectors and correcting them ...
> 
> 
> I won't comment on the code, but I'll note that there
> are legitimate reasons why a read can take a long time:
> drive spin-up (if it has been spun down), queued commands
> (if the device supports them), slow devices (e.g., some
> removable media), very large commands, the occasional
> thermal recalibration all come to mind immediately.
> 
> It would be great if we had this functionality, and even
> better if we had it for all devices.
> 
> On at least some SCSI devices, it's possible to set a
> parameter in the device that sets a threshold for how
> severe an error to report (ECC errors are not a one-
> dimensional thing).  Unfortunately, it's pretty device
> dependent.  I would be nice, when you care about your
> data, to set the threshold very sensitive.  Then when
> an error occurs, you get notified, and you can retry
> or rewrite the block.
> 
> A slightly different approach is an idle scrubber, that
> reads all of your blocks when the system is idle, looking
> for errors and rewriting as necessary.
> 
> Note that in either case, it doesn't come for free and
> doesn't really guarantee your data; a power loss or
> other problem in the middle of the bad-block-rewrite
> can cause problems, and writes fail more often than
> reads.
> 
> 		--Rod
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ext Manish Lachwani [mailto:manish@Zambeel.com]
> > Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 11:33 AM
> > To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; 'Alan Cox'
> > Cc: Manish Lachwani
> > Subject: Early determinition of bad sectors and correcting them ...
> > 
> > 
> > I had thought abt this earlier and tried to implemented it.
> > 
> > Everytime there is an ECC error (0x40), there is a pending 
> > set of sectors
> > that the drive needs to remap. The drive can map the sectors 
> > as part of its
> > house keeping function or the drive can remap it when an 
> > explicit write is
> > made to that sector. Once an ECC error occurs, the remapping 
> > process is
> > manual or we have to wait till an write operation takes place to that
> > sector. 
> > 
> > If a READ gives an ECC error, the amount of time it takes to 
> > read is usually
> > higher as compared to READ operations accross sectors that 
> > are good. Even
> > for a sector or a region of sectors that are degrading over 
> > time, the READ
> > time is a good indication that the sector is deteriorating. A 
> > write to that
> > sector will fix the problem.
> > 
> > Based on the above, I modified the ide driver to implement this simple
> > change. I created a sysctl entry called 
> > ide_disk_delay_threshold which is
> > initially set to 250 ms. In ide-dma.c, I measure the amount 
> > of time it takes
> > to complete a READ request:
> > 
> > 	drive->service_time = jiffies - drive->service_start;
> > 	if (rq->cmd == READ && (ide_disk_delay_threshold > 0) &&
> >             ( (drive->service_time*10) > ide_disk_delay_threshold) ) {
> >         printk("%s: re-write, ", drive->name);
> >         printk("READ took %d ms \n", drive->service_time*10);
> >         /*
> >          * Set the command to write
> >          */
> >         rq->cmd = WRITE;
> >         return ide_stopped;
> >        }
> > 
> > I have tested the above and I have found that everytime I get 
> > accross an ECC
> > error (0x40), the driver immediately writes to that location 
> > remapping that
> > sector. This way, I get away with the bad sectors. The 
> > threshold 250 ms can
> > be changed depending on the application or requirement. But, 
> > it seems to be
> > a good indicator for early prediction of bad sectors ...
> > 
> > Thanks
> > -Manish
> > 
> > -
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