[ale] harddrive errors

[James P. Kinney III]

1. Did you replace the IDE cable with a brand new, un-mangled one? IDE
cables have very fine wires that can't take being bent around much. The
80 wire cables are quite fragile. They feel stiff mostly because of the
insulation. I believe the wire inside are around 30 gauge.

2. Is the box maxed out for the power supply? In other words, do you
have a P4 2+GHz and dual hard drives on a 250 watt PS? I have learned
the hard way that a PS rated for X Watts usually can only RELIABLY
supply 0.8X W. The occasional burst to max load on CD spin up, etc is OK
as long as you get lucky and have no critical functions happening
simultaneously.

3. If the above situations are resolved it's a bad drive. 

I have found (for data recovery purposes only) that adding extra cooling
on a drive with DriveReady Seek errors can help keep it running long
enough to back off needed data. But as soon as it is done, pull the
drive and break off the power socket with a hammer. Unless it's one of
the IBM drives that have readily replaceable controller boards (the
boards go bad long before the drive do so parts swap is useful) there
really isn't much that can be done with out a clean room.


I don't have a clean room.


Yet.  ;)

On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 09:03 -0400, John Wells wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> Recently purchased a Seagate Barracuda IDE drive from CompUSA for use in a
> software RAID-1 array.  Set it up this weekend along with LVM, and
> everything was beautiful.  However, this morning I noticed that it appears
> to have failed (mdadm reports only one drive currently operable). 
> /var/log/messages shows the following:
> ----------------------
> Jun  4 18:55:20 localhost kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady
> SeekComplete Error }
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 {
> UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=152235058, high=9, low=1240114,
> sector=152235058
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector
> 152235058
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel: ^IOperation continuing on 1 devices
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel: RAID1 conf printout:
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel:  --- wd:1 rd:2
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel:  disk 0, wo:1, o:0, dev:hda1
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel:  disk 1, wo:0, o:1, dev:hde1
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel: RAID1 conf printout:
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel:  --- wd:1 rd:2
> Jun  4 18:55:21 localhost kernel:  disk 1, wo:0, o:1, dev:hde1
> ----------------------
> I'm not very familiar with Linux harddrive error messages, so I'm
> uncertain if this is an occasional expectation or if this is an indication
> that the Seagate (/dev/hda) drive is bad.  I'm still within the time I can
> return it, so this would be valuable knowledge.
> 
> I'm googling currently, but if any seasoned drive gurus out can give me a
> definitive answer I'll really appreciate it.
> 
> Thanks!
> John
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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