Question Anyone know what lock chain is?

[DrWho345]

Standard Disclaimer I am not a noob, I have a degree in computers, but there are just some terminologies even I have never heard of. I also apologise ahead of time if I am posting/asking in the wrong spot.

I have TechTool on my iMac, and it was saying my SSD was failing.

The exact message I was getting was as follows

ID#	Attribute/Name	Flag	Value	Worst	Threshhold	Type	Updated	Failed	Raw Value
5	Reallocated Sector Count	0x0033	99	99	10	Pre-Fail	Always	Never	4

I took it to my computer repair place, they took a look and called me, said there is nothing wrong with the drive. (Phew?)

But in order to make sure the error message I am getting goes away it will need to be formatted. So they are doing a time machine backup, to get as up to date as possible, I provided them my backup, but it is at least 3 days old (at the time of writing this) then they will format it, then restore from the latest backup, unless that fails in which case they will use mine. Should hopefully take 24-48 hours. All the while I am writing this from my 2010 macOS High Sierra which continues to faithfully act as my backup, chugging along.

The repair guy used the following analogy on me, and it is confusing me and I don't know how else to interpret it, thus the question

"What basically happened is you have a bunch of programs that basically act like a check engine light on your mac, (DriveDX, TechTool, SMART Utility etc) they will indicate something is wrong, but won't be specific enough. You give it to us, we can determine what the true error is"

He also mentioned sectors, being a SSD that evidently 4 of them went bad, but he mentioned software could be an issue or lock chain, and I am unsure what that is.

Is there anything online to figure out exactly what went wrong, what my specific problem was/is and what exactly goes wrong, that can cause error messages like I am getting or that will make errors on sectors.

 

[fzabkar]

Those 4 reallocated sectors won't go away. They are bad sectors which have been replaced with spares.

I can't see how software could be responsible for bad sectors. As for "lock chain", I don't know what this is, either.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Agree. They sound like they don’t know what they’re talking about.

 

[shengton]

It sounds like the diagnostic software you were using (TechTool, DriveDX, SMART Utility, etc.) reported that there was an issue with your SSD, but when your computer repair shop took a closer look, they found that the drive was actually working fine. This can happen sometimes with diagnostic software, as it can give false positive errors if it isn't able to accurately detect the problem.

The error message you provided (specifically the "Reallocated Sector Count" attribute) indicates that there were some bad sectors on your SSD. When a sector goes bad on an SSD, the drive will automatically move the data from that sector to a new, good sector and mark the old sector as "reallocated" so it won't be used again. This is why the value for the "Reallocated Sector Count" attribute was 4 in your error message – it means that there were 4 sectors that had gone bad and been reallocated.

In your case, it sounds like the repair shop was able to determine that the bad sectors on your SSD weren't causing any issues and didn't need to be fixed. They may have suggested formatting the drive as a way to reset it and potentially clear any errors or issues that the diagnostic software was reporting.

As for the "lock chain" that the repair shop mentioned, I'm not sure what they were referring to specifically. It's possible that they were talking about the "chain of trust" that is used in some versions of macOS to ensure that only trusted software is allowed to run on the system. In this case, a "lock" in the chain of trust could prevent certain software from running, potentially causing errors or other issues.

Overall, it sounds like the repair shop was able to determine that there wasn't actually anything wrong with your SSD and that the error messages you were seeing were likely false positives. They may have suggested formatting the drive and restoring from a backup to ensure that it is working properly and to clear any potential errors that the diagnostic software was reporting. I hope this helps clear up any confusion you may have had!

 

[DrWho345]

It sounds like the diagnostic software you were using (TechTool, DriveDX, SMART Utility, etc.) reported that there was an issue with your SSD, but when your computer repair shop took a closer look, they found that the drive was actually working fine. This can happen sometimes with diagnostic software, as it can give false positive errors if it isn't able to accurately detect the problem.

The error message you provided (specifically the "Reallocated Sector Count" attribute) indicates that there were some bad sectors on your SSD. When a sector goes bad on an SSD, the drive will automatically move the data from that sector to a new, good sector and mark the old sector as "reallocated" so it won't be used again. This is why the value for the "Reallocated Sector Count" attribute was 4 in your error message – it means that there were 4 sectors that had gone bad and been reallocated.

In your case, it sounds like the repair shop was able to determine that the bad sectors on your SSD weren't causing any issues and didn't need to be fixed. They may have suggested formatting the drive as a way to reset it and potentially clear any errors or issues that the diagnostic software was reporting.

As for the "lock chain" that the repair shop mentioned, I'm not sure what they were referring to specifically. It's possible that they were talking about the "chain of trust" that is used in some versions of macOS to ensure that only trusted software is allowed to run on the system. In this case, a "lock" in the chain of trust could prevent certain software from running, potentially causing errors or other issues.

Overall, it sounds like the repair shop was able to determine that there wasn't actually anything wrong with your SSD and that the error messages you were seeing were likely false positives. They may have suggested formatting the drive and restoring from a backup to ensure that it is working properly and to clear any potential errors that the diagnostic software was reporting. I hope this helps clear up any confusion you may have had!

Thank you for cleaning up the lock chain part of it, I asked this on another website, and people kept confusing it for block chain which I don’t have, out of all the responses I think you are the closest to what the repair guys were talking Amit. Initially I thought it was a loss in translation or they were just stalling for time, but you may have nailed it

thanks

 

[shengton]

Thank you for cleaning up the lock chain part of it, I asked this on another website, and people kept confusing it for block chain which I don’t have, out of all the responses I think you are the closest to what the repair guys were talking Amit. Initially I thought it was a loss in translation or they were just stalling for time, but you may have nailed it

thanks

Your welcome, glad to help here.