[ILUG] smartmontools Seek_Error_Rate

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

I'm a little purturbed that from time to time I get a message from
smartmontools along the lines of:

Nov 16 12:24:18 robin smartd[7056]: Device: /dev/hdc, SMART Prefailure Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate changed from 67 to 68 

sometimes from hda and sometimes from hdc.  I searched around and found
this blog entry.

http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2006/03/04/smartmontools-saves-the-day/

It says that he looked repeatedly at the output of "smartctl -a /dev/ad0"
and saw that Seek_Error_Rate kept rising.  So I decided to try the same
thing.  On both drives, the RAW_VALUE is rising consistently.

gavin at robin ~> sudo /usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/hda |grep Seek_Error
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   069   060   030    Pre-fail  Always -       7344028
gavin at robin ~> sudo /usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/hda |grep Seek_Error
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   069   060   030    Pre-fail  Always -       7344042
gavin at robin ~> sudo /usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/hdc |grep Seek_Error
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   068   060   030    Pre-fail  Always -       7249467
gavin at robin ~> sudo /usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/hdc |grep Seek_Error
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   068   060   030    Pre-fail  Always -       7249487

Does this suggest I'm about to lose both disks or is something else going
on?  They're identical disks and both are about 2 months old
(model=ST3320620A) -- they're setup as md software raid 1 drives.  I
wouldn't worry overly if only disk was looking off, but both of them is a
real concern.

Anyone understand what's going on?

Gavin