[Discuss] ATA Access Errors For Spinning Disk

[Dan Ritter]

jbk wrote: 
> I periodically get access errors for a specific spinning disk that I have
> done these things to diagnose:
> Changed Sata Cable
> Switched Sata bus on MB
> Run E2fsck on the 3 formatted ext4 partitions w/ no errors found
> Run smartctl -a: all results within norms
> Run smartctl -t short: No errors found
> 
> Disk operation age is about 7.5 years with around a couple hundred starts.
> It has been in continuous operation for over 8 years except during
> vacations. On occasion the disk partitions will become unmounted and a mount
> -a will remount the partitions as a different device from lets say sda to
> sdd. I've not lost any data and I do regular backups to another device
> that's rotated out of system.
> 
> I seem to have always had these errors present on this MB that is maybe 4 or
> 5 years in operation. Any thoughts on the cause of this issue? Do others see
> this behavior on occasion on systems they manage?
> 
> On this same system my Rocky OS on an SSD is showing no issues at all. Same
> operation age as the spinner.

I'm glad you've got good backups. It's going to die at an
inconvenient time for you. That's not specific; that's just what
computers do.

Next time the errors occur, dig them out of the log and show
them to us verbatim, please.

-dsr-