A little puzzled: Hard drive polling error, but all is good?

[-Plus|Minus+]

Good day my fellow enthusiasts,

I come to you with a conundrum, and a hope for a little assistance. I'm new to the wonderful world of Truenas, and Unix based systems.
I've a clutch of old faithful hard drives that I've been setting up these last weeks, but 1 of them is causing annoyance.

The 30min polling is reporting 15 currently unreadable sectors. It is not in a pool, or vDev, it had no data on it and is currently connected on it's lonesome. I have a hunch the drive has been like this for a very long time, and it's been operating in other Windows-based devices quite happily like this.

The puzzle is the SMART reporting (short and long) does not seemingly report an error. I am new to this, so perhaps I'm not understanding the report correctly?

What I've tried:
- (GUI) Full wipe x lots
- Badblocks 'destructive' - several days
- Connecting it to Windows: Full format FAT32, and NTFS. Full CHDSK scan and repair

But still the SMART report (long) doesn't report what's actually wrong, and every 30mins my console is filling up with the same error.

Code:

Warning: settings changed through the CLI are not written to
the configuration database and will be reset on reboot.

root@Plek-Vault[~]# smartctl -a /dev/ada3
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p14 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Green (AF)
Device Model:     WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0
Serial Number:    WD-WMAZ20088854
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 6aad5feac
Firmware Version: 50.0AB50
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Wed May 11 20:00:49 2022 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                (36600) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        ( 417) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x3035) SCT Status supported.
                                        SCT Feature Control supported.
                                        SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       33
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   187   162   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       5650
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       4068
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   048   048   000    Old_age   Always       -       38057
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       207
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       87
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   056   056   000    Old_age   Always       -       432231
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   117   075   000    Old_age   Always       -       33
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   196   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   198   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       7
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   134   000    Old_age   Offline      -       59

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     38015         -
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     37910         -
# 3  Extended offline    Interrupted (host reset)      10%     37834         -
# 4  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%     37590         -
# 5  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     37589         -
# 6  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     37589         -
# 7  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     37580         -
# 8  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     37578         -

Smart Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-sc

Disclaimer: Over the weeks of researching and reading the wonderful posts by this community, I've been so encouraged by the sagely wisdom and strong advice about backups and not risking silly things with data etc. Well done!
For this scenario, please do understand that I'm a senior IT professional who's been preaching this for too many decades as well.

In this particular case, I've several backups and this environment is not in Production. Before we go into the rabbit hole of 'through away, buy new' - please be aware I've just spent an eye watering amount on x6 4TB Iron Wolfs for proper data things - such is my positive reaction to Truenas. We can throw some of the caution to the wind in this case, the mission is to keep this working drive operating until it's end, not to ensure preserving the integrity of the data on it.

The goal is either to clear these errors from the drive, or stop this drive reporting the issue every 30min (but to start reporting it again if it was to increase to 16 or more).
I hope some kind hearted person(s) has a little time to help with this, I would be most grateful having (what feels like) read half the forum trying to solve this mystery.

Kind Regards,
-Plus|Minus+

 

[Samuel Tai]

There are portions of the SMART report which do report errors:

Code:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       33
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   056   056   000    Old_age   Always       -       432231
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   196   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       7
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   134   000    Old_age   Offline      -       59

Unfortunately, the only way I can see to correct these is to junk the drive, as what's likely happened is the high number of load cycles has damaged the heads, which has resulted in the raw read error rate and the multi-zone error rate. In addition, the drive logic board is showing UDMA CRC errors for data read, which means the logic board buffers are starting to fail. Finally, the pending sectors corresponds to your unreadable sectors, which are unable to relocate due to the head damage.

 

[-Plus|Minus+]

Ahh, gosh! I'd researched about the 'value' section starting at 100, but didn't have an understanding if those RAW values were typical for a near 10 year old drive, or actually indicating something specific.

Thank you for your time, your report does make it sound very 'terminal' :( Such a shame! Hmmm, back to the drawing board!