Update SMART Error

[geoff]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

The bios was reporting a smart imminent drive failure message on bootup.
However, when I downloaded utilities from western digital and seagate, the
smart status was normal and the extended tests came back normal.

Someone mentioned bios rot but actually, I think it was cmos rot. While
working on my MB, I replaced the battery. I removed it for about an hour,
put the new one in, got a checksum error on bootup and 'loading defaults'
message and so far, have not had the smart error message.

-g

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Geoff wrote:

> The bios was reporting a smart imminent drive failure message on bootup.
> However, when I downloaded utilities from western digital and seagate, the
> smart status was normal and the extended tests came back normal.
>
> Someone mentioned bios rot but actually, I think it was cmos rot. While
> working on my MB, I replaced the battery. I removed it for about an hour,
> put the new one in, got a checksum error on bootup and 'loading defaults'
> message and so far, have not had the smart error message.

Thanks for posting the resolution.

BTW, I originally suggested clearing CMOS first, and reflashing the BIOS
only if the problem persisted.

P2B

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

P2B - thank you for your reply in the original thread. The message
appears after the Adaptec SCSI BIOS successfully completes, just before
Grub loads.

I have just seen this resolution, so will give the NVRAM/RTC a clearout
and see if this works.


--
_pF_

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

No luck with resetting the rtc/nvram. The "Exceeded Failure Prediction
Threshold" message remains. With the questionable drive removed from
the Adaptec BIOS scan, the message goes away, so it looks like a
problem with this particular Seagate disk - but not a SMART one.

All I want to do is kill the message because it halts the boot.


--
_pF_

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

_pF_ wrote:
> No luck with resetting the rtc/nvram. The "Exceeded Failure Prediction
> Threshold" message remains. With the questionable drive removed from
> the Adaptec BIOS scan, the message goes away, so it looks like a
> problem with this particular Seagate disk - but not a SMART one.

Very odd. What model is the Seagate?

> All I want to do is kill the message because it halts the boot.

Setting the BIOS to Halt On No Errors doesn't accomplish that?

P2B

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

P2B wrote:
> Setting the BIOS to Halt On No Errors doesn't accomplish that?

If the Adaptec SCSI BIOS is doing it, it won't, since the system BIOS
does not control that bootup sequence.

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

The drive is a 'SEAGATE ST118273LW'.

None of the (1014b3) BIOS settings affect the message for the reason
Robert gave. Only excluding the disk from the BIOS scan 'works'.


--
_pF_

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

_pF_ wrote:
> The drive is a 'SEAGATE ST118273LW'.
>
> None of the (1014b3) BIOS settings affect the message for the reason
> Robert gave. Only excluding the disk from the BIOS scan 'works'.

There are two reasons I suspect the SMART error message comes from the
motherboard BIOS rather than the Adaptec BIOS:

1. The OP reported the error for a WD IDE drive. If I understood him
correctly, the error persisted when no SCSI devices were attached.

2. You reported the error as the last BIOS message displayed, just
before the first OS loader message. The motherboard BIOS is back in
control at that point, having displayed the system configuration summary
page followed by any ESCD messages. The last message from the Adaptec
BIOS is the SCSI BIOS status, i.e. installed or not installed.

In any case the root cause appears to be buggy SMART failure detection,
and may not be fixable since turning off SMART (the default, BTW) and/or
halt on errors in the BIOS doesn't appear to have any effect.

The OP did say he set "halt on all errors except disk and keyboard"
rather than "halt on no errors", which might be a straw worth grasping...

P2B

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

None of the Award BIOS 'Halt on error' settings affect the SMART
message.

Watching closely I saw some other messages flash up and immediately
disappear right after the I hit the 'Any' key for the SMART message,
but just before Grub loaded.

These other messages were the Award system configuration information
(in a box), followed by the PCI device listing. So it was back in
Award at this point; whether the SMART message came from Award or
Adaptec I can't tell for sure.


--
_pF_

 

[geoff]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

"_pF_" <pF_.1o3qjn@news.computerbanter.com> wrote in message
news😛F_.1o3qjn@news.computerbanter.com...
>
> The drive is a 'SEAGATE ST118273LW'.

You need to go to the seagate web page and confirm the smart error using
their tools. If there is no problem then I would say it is buggy smart
error detection on the part of the adaptec bios. On my machine, the bios
would look for the ide drives, I have one cd-rom and one 80 gig hard disk,
and right after finding them, the smart error would appear. The nice thing
about the wdc disk tools is it shows the threshold values and the worst
value that ever occurred. In my case, all the values were well within the
normal ranges.

-g