[smartmontools-support] OS hangs and COMRESET events: failing drive?

[Christian Franke]

Gruff Hacker via Smartmontools-support wrote:
> I have a LITEONIT LGT-256M6G M.2 SATA SSD on a Windows 10 system.
> For a few days the OS has been hanging periodically and the only thing I can see in Windows events logs is this:
>
> Source:        iaStorA
> Event ID:      129
> Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.
>
> There is no RAID configured.
> During the hangs, the drive access light is on steady the entire time.
> There are apparently a large number of issues that can cause this, but the only other thing I noticed is this in the smartmontools output:
> SATA Phy Event Counters (GP Log 0x11)
> ID      Size     Value  Description
> 0x000a  2          218  Device-to-host register FISes sent due to a COMRESET
>
> Every time one of these hangs happens, the counter of that COMRESET event in the smartmontools output will increment.
> Any ideas?  Does this indicate a failing drive?
>
> What is the meaning of this "Device-to-host register FISes sent due to a COMRESET" event?

COMRESET is an OOB signal on the SATA interface used to reset the 
device. The "... due to a COMRESET" counter is cleared on power on and 
usually increases by 2 during each (warm-)boot due to COMRESETs from 
BIOS and device driver.

In the above case, the counter increased further because the device 
driver decided to reset the device several times. Unfortunately this 
provides no hint why the resets were issued.


> Full details below.
> Thanks
>
> smartctl 6.3 2014-07-26 r3976 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-win8] (sf-6.3-1)
> Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
>
> === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
> Device Model:     LITEONIT LGT-256M6G
> Firmware Version: DG83001
> User Capacity:    256,060,514,304 bytes [256 GB]
> ...
>
> SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
> Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAGS    VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
>    1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     PO----   100   100   070    -    0
>    5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO----   100   100   000    -    0
>    9 Power_On_Hours          -O----   100   100   000    -    12462
>   12 Power_Cycle_Count       -O----   100   100   000    -    403
> 177 Wear_Leveling_Count     PO----   100   100   000    -    1778823
> 178 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip  PO----   100   100   000    -    8
> 181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  PO----   100   100   000    -    0
> 182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total  PO----   100   100   000    -    13
> 187 Reported_Uncorrect      -O----   100   100   000    -    0
> 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count PO----   100   100   000    -    205
> 196 Reallocated_Event_Count PO----   100   100   000    -    0
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   PO----   100   100   000    -    0
> 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    PO----   100   100   000    -    9
> 232 Available_Reservd_Space PO----   100   100   010    -    0
> 241 Total_LBAs_Written      PO----   100   100   000    -    1897582
> 242 Total_LBAs_Read         PO----   100   100   000    -    1550151
>                              ||||||_ K auto-keep
>                              |||||__ C event count
>                              ||||___ R error rate
>                              |||____ S speed/performance
>                              ||_____ O updated online
>                              |______ P prefailure warning
> ...

SMART values show no signs of trouble. If the raw value of ID 199 
increases further, check for M.2 connector problems.

Regards,
Christian