I have been running 12.04 on my Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E751 for almost a year without any problems, and then several days ago I noticed a very high CPU IOwait that makes the system poorly responsive (it freezes for fractions of a second, but this happens very often making the computer very unpleasant to use). I tried to debug and iotop identifies jbd2
(Journaling block device) as the process responsible. This process is only called while I do regular activities and not when the computer is idle. It did not seem that the problem is that it is called too often, but that when it is called, it takes too much time to do its job. So I have tried to check my disk and was unpleasantly surprised by its extremely slow performance parameters.
sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sdb6
/dev/sdb6:
Timing cached reads: 2 MB in 2.43 seconds = 842.41 kB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 22 MB in 3.01 seconds = 7.30 MB/sec
I did a fresh install of 13.04 (I had all my data backed up so it was not so radical) and that did not fix anything. I also checked the disk performance while booted from USB and the disk performance is the same (the system booted from USB is very responsive so I assume that this cannot be cpu or memory problem). Could this be fixed (is this a software or a hardware failure)?
Thank you for your advices.
Filip
PS: Here is some more data that might be useful.
sync ; time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=100k count=1k && sync" ; rm testfile
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 0,0837853 s, 1,3 GB/s
real 0m1.250s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.100s
sudo hdparm /dev/sdb6
/dev/sdb6:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 60801/255/63, sectors = 731281408, start = 198688768
sudo hdparm -i /dev/sdb6
/dev/sdb6:
Model=TOSHIBA MK5061GSYN, FwRev=MH000K, SerialNo=629GF6JIS
Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=16384kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=65535/1/63, CurSects=4128705, LBA=yes, LBAsects=976773168
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-3,4,5,6,7
* signifies the current active mode
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb6
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.8.0-23-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Toshiba 2.5" HDD MK..61GSYN
Device Model: TOSHIBA MK5061GSYN
Serial Number: 629GF6JIS
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000039 416f03c89
Firmware Version: MH000K
User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Fri Jul 5 22:01:13 2013 CEST
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: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 25) The self-test routine was aborted by
the host.
Total time to complete Offline data collection: ( 120) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No 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: ( 126) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x003d) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control 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 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 100 100 001 Pre-fail Always - 2356
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1413
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 093 093 000 Old_age Always - 3160
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0033 128 100 030 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1149
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 26
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 7
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 22993
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 59 (Min/Max 18/61)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
220 Disk_Shift 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 8364
222 Loaded_Hours 0x0032 094 094 000 Old_age Always - 2550
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
224 Load_Friction 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
226 Load-in_Time 0x0026 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 266
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0001 100 100 001 Pre-fail Offline - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 1
CR = Command Register [HEX]
FR = Features Register [HEX]
SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
ER = Error register [HEX]
ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes, SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.
Error 1 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 310 hours (12 days + 22 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
84 41 30 ff ff 25 65 Error: ICRC, ABRT at LBA = 0x0525ffff = 86376447
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
61 00 40 00 01 26 40 00 05:26:41.826 WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
61 00 38 00 00 26 40 00 05:26:41.826 WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
61 00 30 00 ff 25 40 00 05:26:41.826 WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
61 00 28 00 fe 25 40 00 05:26:41.826 WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
61 00 20 00 fd 25 40 00 05:26:41.823 WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 3155 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3155 -
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-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.