Seagate ST2000DM001 2tb - 3 drives all reporting SMART error

While I have no direct experience with the specific Seagate drives you mention, I have extensive experience with other Seagate models. RAID service is hard on drives, that being said, I had a 500GB drive that ran for over three years (25,000+ hours) while it's companion in a two drive array in my NV+ failed withing the first 30 days. I replaced it with the same model that that drive also ran for over 25,000 hours. They replaced the drive with a refurbished 750GB drive which I used in other less demanding service.

I have 8 1TB Seagates (I had 10, but when I rehomed my NV+ after go to two NVX units, two of the drives went with it). In that population I have had problems with about half of them. I currently have two refurbished drives in my arrays, one of which has run for almost 3,000 hours and the other for almost 8,000 hours without any errors to date. They do reset the meter when they refurbish a drive.

One of the original 1TB drives threw 123 errors on 2/18 and another 28 on 2/28 for a total of 151. I still have a spare so I am keeping an eye on it, but in almost 4 additional months it has not thrown any more errors. It reached 151 errors at 12,893 hours and is currently at 15,458 hours. I would watch the error count and have a spare standing by. If the count keeps increasing then at some point you should replace the drive. I have found the error reporting on the ReadyNAS line accurate as it is reading the SMART data from the drive. Some of the info in the register (such as head flying hours) is data not really related to the title and data only Seagate understands. But the hours and errors are just that and should be kept up with.

If you will go to Status and then Logs in Frontview, in the upper right corner you will notice a blue hyperlink to download all logs. This download the detail logs onto your PC. The log file that is viewed on screen is just the alerts that have been sent. The downloaded detail log (Syste_log-#name#-#date#) is a .zip file, but double clicking on it in Windows will open the file. There should be a series of disk_smart_#date#.log files and you will note they are logged every week and there should be 10 of them. Periodically downloaded them every other month will enable you to keep a detailed history of the errors.

While I don't have any specific info on the ST2000DM001 drives, looking at the customer ratings on Newegg, I would classify the ratings as tepid at best. The ratings are 1 to 5 (eggs) and only 56% rate it a 4 or 5 and 35% rate it either 1 or 2. Normally in a product, I prefer around 80% 4 or 5 in order to feel comfortable about it. Total number of the reviews is 112, and keep in mind that most of the users of drives do not have them in a RAID configuration. If I were running 2TB drives and were looking for a new drive, I would not purchase any more of these. In contrast the Samsung HD204UI which is the same price has over 1400 reviews and 81% 4 or 5 and 14% 1 or 2. Both drives have only a 1 year warranty now.

Hi there PapaBear and many thanks for the very informative reply, its greatly appreciated. Sorry for the slight delay in getting back I did not receive the email notification of your post and just happened to spot it!

The plot thickens... I decided to swap the drives around on the nas to see if the good drive would begin to report SMART ERRORS when placed in the other bay and bingo it did!

So I can only assume that both the drives are OK and the nas is sending out a false error message from bay 1...

If thats the case I would be interested in knowing why it does this and if there is anything further that I can do to resolve the issue as its still sum what concerning.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great.

Many thanks again,

Devs.

First - I would not assume that the ReadyNAS is reporting false errors. Keep track of the errors reported in the SMART log. This is not a log that is a ReadyNAS log, but a log on the drive itself maintained by the firmware on the drive. The ReadyNAS reads and copies the log into it's disk_smart_#date#.log file on the NAS, but cannot AFIK actually write to the SMART log on the drive.

When testing a drive with Seatools, one of the tests reads the SMART log on the drive and gives a pass/fail. It does not give the full info. There may be third party software aps that can read the SMART log of a drive when installed in a PC, but I don't know of a specific one. Many times the errors occur on restart, resync or other such activity on the drive. So it is not surprising that when you swapped the drives and restarted that you got an error on what had been a "good" drive.

Again, it depends on what these errors are doing. If they continue to climb, it is a definite indication that the drive is failing. The rate at which it is failing is indicated by how fast the errors mount, as there is a limit and then the drive will report itself dead. As I posted earlier, I have a drive that had climbing errors back in the spring, but then it stopped logging errors and is still functioning. I am just keeping an eye on it, with a spare handy.

It would be helpful if you reported exactly what the errors are.

If they are reallocated sectors, then the issue is certainly with the drives, and not the NAS. That is the case with almost all the SMART+ parameters.

But there are a couple of exceptions. For instance, if they are generic "ATA errors" then the problem could possibly be in the NAS SATA interface hardware (it could also be in the drive electronics).