[plug] Hard Drive Woes

[David Campbell]

> From:          John Darrington <magna at highway1.net.au>

> Yesterday I acquired a second hard disk for my machine.  Installed it formated it mounted it 
> no problem.
> 
> Today, still no problem with that drive.  However the ( previously reliable ) first drive has
> thrown up lots of errors:
> 
> Jul 29 06:40:48 kassandra kernel: hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
> Jul 29 06:40:48 kassandra kernel: hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1583340, sector=1049100
> Jul 29 06:40:48 kassandra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03, sector 1049100
> Jul 29 06:40:48 kassandra kernel: EXT2-fs error (device 03:03): ext2_readdir: directory #130561 contains a hole at offset 0
> Jul 29 06:40:49 kassandra kernel: hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
> Jul 29 06:40:49 kassandra kernel: hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1583340, sector=1049100
> Jul 29 06:40:49 kassandra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03, sector 1049100

Try the following
--------------------------------------------------
hdparm -c1 -d0 -u1 /dev/hda
hdparm -c1 -d0 -u1 /dev/hdb
--------------------------------------------------

Read the hdparm man page for more details. I have had all sorts of 
problems with the IDE CD-R in my machine originally. People at last 
nights meeting would remember that I did a test burn (I just changed the 
host machine of the CD-R drive). This was to look for the above messages. 
After 5 mins there was no sign of the messages so a quick ^C and restart 
with a proper burn.

Also change the BIOS settings for the drives from "AUTO" to "PIO", this 
also solves a few problems, but after trying hdparm. There is some way of 
doing this from the LILO prompt but I can't remeber how...

David Campbell
=======================================================
campbell at torque.net

The feature freeze on Linux 2.1.x is starting to be
annoying. I say bring on Linux 2.3.x!!!