Repeated Failure to Access Unmounted HDD

notadoc · 02-25-2020, 12:34 PM

System: Kernel: 4.8.0-53-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.6.7 Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia

I have an external HDD which is not automounted, and ID's as /dev/sdb, The following messages appear in the journald log about every 10 minutes.

Quote:

kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [descriptor]
kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Add. Sense: No additional sense information
kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: ATA command pass through(16) 85 06 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e5 00

How can I stop this waste of resources?

smallpond · 02-25-2020, 01:51 PM

Something is sending an unsupported command to your disk periodically. Are you running smartmon maybe? "ps -ef |grep smart" to check. If that's not it, install iotop and use it to find the culprit.

notadoc · 02-27-2020, 12:06 PM

I am running the gkrellm monitor. I shut it down, but the messages persist. I'm not familiar with iotop, but I'm gonna look into that. Thanks for the suggestions.