[mythtv-users] 3TB...poof

[Will Dormann]

On 3/17/19 11:21 AM, Craig Treleaven wrote:
> So, yet again, the drive with all my recordings is unreadable.  This
> has happened to me in September 2015, August 2013 and at least one
> time before that although I’m not sure of the date.  And again this
> past Tuesday night.  I know the dates because in 2013 I started
> labelling drives and enclosures with the date purchased and I
> purchased these items specifically because of these problems.
> 
> I’m running Myth on Mac so virtually none of you care.  However, if
> there is someone out there on OS X that has experienced this and
> actually KNOWS a solution, I’d love to hear it.


If you're running any system without Smartmontools smartd monitoring and
notification, then don't be surprised when a drive dies without warning.
 This has nothing to do with macOS or MythTV.

The relevant part of my smartd.conf file is:


#DEVICESCAN -d removable -n standby -m root -M exec
/usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner
/dev/sda -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././03|L/../../6/04) -m wdormann at gmail.com


That is, comment out the "DEVICESCAN" line and add a line that is
relevant to your system.   The second line above runs a short self-test
every day at 3AM, and a long self-test once a week at 4AM, emailing me
if there's any trouble (either due to a failed self-test, or if
something bad happens during normal operation).

Note that some drive failures are not predictable.  smartd won't help
you with those.  However, it *will* tell you when many things are not
looking good.  Such as running with a too-high temperature, or if the
reallocated sector count grows beyond 0.


-WD