This article is for informational purposes only and no longer being updated by Seagate.

What is Error Recovery Control?

Brief description of Error Recovery Control, which enables the host to set a soft time limit for specific commands (reads and writes).

Offered on Barracuda ES and ES.2 family SATA enterprise drives, Error Recovery Control (ERC) is a subset of the Smart Command Transport (SCT) command set, enabling the host to set a soft time limit for specific commands (reads and writes).

Advantages:

  • Ensures hosts don't mistakenly assume busy drives are dead and need maintenance; averts unwarranted drive swaps and RAID rebuilds
  • Boosts RAID performance by flagging disks slowed by errors; alerts need for data reconstruction and rewrite to resolve disk errors, restore speed
  • Unavailable in desktop-class drives (due to less demanding environment)

Key Component:  Soft Time Limit