[GTALUG] nvme SSD: critical medium error, dev nvme0n1

[Giles Orr]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2019 at 13:28, Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
wrote:

> I'm guessing this is bad, right?
>
>     [Mon Jul 29 12:59:48 2019] print_req_error: critical medium error,
> dev nvme0n1, sector 296089600 flags 80700
>     [Mon Jul 29 12:59:48 2019] print_req_error: critical medium error,
> dev nvme0n1, sector 296089744 flags 0
>
> Is it an oh-shit-get-yerself-a-new-drive-NOW thing, or …?
>
> Drive is a 2+ year old Intel 512 GB SSD. Not entirely sure what the
> right diagnostics are for SSDs. Filesystem is showing clean but touching
> certain known-bad files triggers the error in the system log.
>
> Dunno if these nvme stats are useful:
>
>     Smart Log for NVME device:nvme0 namespace-id:ffffffff
>     critical_warning                    : 0
>     temperature                         : 25 C
>     available_spare                     : 85%
>     available_spare_threshold           : 10%
>     percentage_used                     : 1%
>     data_units_read                     : 10,349,479
>     data_units_written                  : 10,098,299
>     host_read_commands                  : 183,018,841
>     host_write_commands                 : 136,702,227
>     controller_busy_time                : 1,342
>     power_cycles                        : 201
>     power_on_hours                      : 15,722
>     unsafe_shutdowns                    : 10
>     media_errors                        : 803
>     num_err_log_entries                 : 844
>     Warning Temperature Time            : 0
>     Critical Composite Temperature Time : 0
>     Thermal Management T1 Trans Count   : 0
>     Thermal Management T2 Trans Count   : 0
>     Thermal Management T1 Total Time    : 0
>     Thermal Management T2 Total Time    : 0
>
> Any suggestions, please, for:
>
> * what I should be looking for in stats (nvme smart-log-add doesn't give
> me anything at all, so no wear-levelling stats)
>
> * a decent brand to replace it with. I'm likely okay with a SATA SSD.
>
> cheers,
>  Stewart
>

The log doesn't sound like heavy use ... and yet that sounds like an
"oh-shit-get-yerself-a-new-drive-NOW" error to me.  At the very least, stay
on top of your backups.  As I understand it, when "segments" go bad on a
solid state drive (hell, even on a spinning disk these days), the drive
firmware should silently move the data and you'd never even know it
happened.  That you're seeing the errors is alarming and suggests a fairly
serious malfunction.

But ... I have no expertise with SSD (or NVMe) drives - I have a few, but
none have failed so I haven't had to learn.  Ignore this suggestion if you
get advice from someone with more knowledge of those drives ...

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com
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