Seagate ST3500071FC, ST3400071FC manual Defect and error management, Drive internal defects/errors

7.0Defect and error management

The drive, as delivered, complies with this product manual. The read error rates and specified storage capaci- ties are not dependent upon use of defect management routines by the host (initiator).

Defect and error management in the SCSI protocol involves the drive internal defect/error management and FC-AL system error considerations (errors in communications between the initiator and the drive). Tools for use in designing a defect/error management plan are briefly outlined in this section. References to other sec- tions are provided when necessary.

7.1Drive internal defects/errors

During the initial drive format operation at the factory, media defects are identified, tagged as being unusable, and their locations recorded on the drive primary defects list (referred to as the “P’ list and also as the ETF defect list). At factory format time, these known defects are also reallocated, that is, reassigned to a new place on the medium and the location listed in the defects reallocation table. The “P” list is not altered after factory formatting. Locations of defects found and reallocated during error recovery procedures after drive shipment are listed in the “G” list (defects growth list). The “P” and “G” lists may be referenced by the initiator using the Read Defect Data command.

Details of the SCSI commands supported by the drive are described in the Fibre Channel Interface Manual. Also, more information on the drive Error Recovery philosophy is presented in the Fibre Channel Interface Manual.

7.2Drive error recovery procedures

When an error occurs during drive operation, the drive, if programmed to do so, performs error recovery proce- dures to attempt to recover the data. The error recovery procedures used depend on the options previously set in the Error Recovery Parameters mode page. Error recovery and defect management may involve using sev- eral SCSI commands described in the Fibre Channel Interface Manual. The drive implements selectable error recovery time limits required in video applications.

The error recovery scheme supported by the drive provides a way to control the total error recovery time for the entire command in addition to controlling the recovery level for a single LBA. The total amount of time spent in error recovery for a command can be limited using the Recovery Time Limit bytes in the Error Recovery mode page. The total amount of time spent in error recovery for a single LBA can be limited using the Read Retry Count or Write Retry Count bytes in the Error Recovery mode page.

The drive firmware error recovery algorithms consists of 11 levels for read recoveries and five levels for write. Each level may consist of multiple steps, where a step is defined as a recovery function involving a single re- read or re-write attempt. The maximum level used by the drive in LBA recovery is determined by the read and write retry counts.

NL35 Series FC Product Manual, Rev. D 35