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Appendix, High reliability, Hard drive failure prediction – DATOptic ARC-1680 Series User Manual

Page 173: Auto reassign sector

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APPENDIX

The SAS RAID controller allows user to choose the task priority

(Ultra Low (5%), Low (20%), Medium (50%), High (80%)) to bal-

ance volume set access and background tasks appropriately. For

high array performance, specify an Ultra Low value. Like volume

initialization, after a volume rebuilds, it does not require a system

reboot.

High Reliability

Hard Drive Failure Prediction

In an effort to help users avoid data loss, disk manufacturers are

now incorporating logic into their drives that acts as an "early

warning system" for pending drive problems. This system is called

SMART. The disk integrated controller works with multiple sensors

to monitor various aspects of the drive's performance, determines

from this information if the drive is behaving normally or not,

and makes available status information to SAS RAID controller

firmware that probes the drive and look at it.

The SMART can often predict a problem before failure occurs.

The controllers will recognize a SMART error code and notify the

administer of an impending hard drive failure.

Auto Reassign Sector

Under normal operation, even initially defect-free drive media can

develop defects. This is a common phenomenon. The bit density

and rotational speed of disks is increasing every year, and so are

the potential of problems. Usually a drive can internally remap

bad sectors without external help using cyclic redundancy check

(CRC) checksums stored at the end of each sector.

SAS RAID controller drives perform automatic defect re-assign-

ment for both read and write errors. Writes are always completed

- if a location to be written is found to be defective, the drive

will automatically relocate that write command to a new location

and map out the defective location. If there is a recoverable read

error, the correct data will be transferred to the host and that

location will be tested by the drive to be certain the location is not