[Preston] Strange HDD / IDE problems

Matthew T. Atkinson matthew at agrip.org.uk
Mon Jan 19 23:04:32 GMT 2004


'ellow,

I've been having some really weird and quite awful-sounding problems
with the hard disk in my desktop lately.  I was wondering if anyone has
ever had similar experiences to these:

* A few times this weekend, everything seemed to hang.  I couldn't
launch any applications in X.  When I went back to the console I saw
loads of ``EXT-fs: <some read operation error> sector <big number>''
messages filling the screen.  I had to reboot the machine to get it back
to a working state.

* Yesterday it was unable to boot up, the BIOS couldn't see the hard
disk at one point.  Later on, after I forced the BIOS to re-autodetect
the HDD, it booted most of the way but sometimes died when entering
GDM.  The HDD would make horrible turning off/on-type noises.  It would
die (with the read errors) after only a couple of minutes of being
turned on.

* This morning, I was desparately trying to get a presentation off it
that I had done for work and the same errors started happening on the
floppy drive!

* Now I have come home and it has booted up, so I thought I would try
e-mailing to see if any of you had experienced anything like this
before.  I had originally thought it was the HDD but now I am wondering
if it could be the mobo too/instead.

* At the moment, the floppy drive is still not working correctly
(input/output errors whenever I try to mkdosfs or dd the disk) and the
hard drive is causing stutters in music and loading apps up.  Other than
that it seems relatively OK.

Unfortunately I was using evolution checking my mail every five minutes
as a way of keeping the ADSL connection alive (still having untracable
network problems).  I think I have lost some e-mail over the weekend as
I had to reboot the box whilst evo was open with new mails in it.  I
have now written a shell script to keep the connection going (will try
another modem when I get the time).

Needless to say I am a bit cheesed off that I had to rewrite the whole
presentation again today and now it seems to load up fine (albeit with
some stuttering whilst OOo loads)!  That's actually quite funny, really
:-).

FYI, I am running Debian Sid with Linux 2.4.21 and the HDD is a 60GB
ATA100 (though I am not using the kernel option to enable UDMA mode as I
didn't know how until very recently).  The filesystem is ext3.  The disk
is hda and has 3 partitions (one is swap but is hardly ever used).  I
was never warned by the ``SMART'' thingy on the disk/BIOS that anything
was wrong.  Last time I had a problem like this (about a year ago, with
a different HDD) a message from the BIOS warned me about 24 hours before
it bit the dust.

I have attached 3 files in the hope that they might show something
useful:

* ``via'' is the result of ``cat /proc/ide/via''
* ``dmesg_grep_hd'' is the result of ``dmesg | grep hd''
* ``dmesg_grep_floppy'' is the result of ``dmesg | grep floppy''

The errors in ``dmesg_grep_hd'' are not the ones I was getting yesterday
(they were from EXT-fs, these are more like timeouts).

If any of you have ever come across anything like this before, I'd
appreciate any info you might have.  I'll check the web site archives if
it dies again.

I'll try and run fsck and/or badblock after sending this, but I wanted
to get this out of the door while I still could :-).

bye just now, thanks in advance for any info you may have,


-- 
Matthew T. Atkinson <matthew at agrip.org.uk>
-------------- next part --------------
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:1c (floppy), sector 0
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
floppy0: probe failed...
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 0, sector 1, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
-------------- next part --------------
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xff00-0xff07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xff08-0xff0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
hda: MAXTOR 6L060J3, ATA DISK drive
hdc: 20X10, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: ATAPI DVD-ROM 16X, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 117266688 sectors (60041 MB) w/1820KiB Cache, CHS=7299/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdc: attached ide-scsi driver.
hdd: attached ide-scsi driver.
hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: (__ide_dma_test_irq) called while not waiting
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: drive not ready for command
hda: status error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: status error: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hda: no DRQ after issuing MULTWRITE
hda: status error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: status error: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hda: no DRQ after issuing MULTWRITE
hda: status error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: status error: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hda: no DRQ after issuing WRITE
hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: (__ide_dma_test_irq) called while not waiting
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: drive not ready for command
hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: (__ide_dma_test_irq) called while not waiting
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: drive not ready for command
hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: (__ide_dma_test_irq) called while not waiting
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: drive not ready for command
-------------- next part --------------
----------VIA BusMastering IDE Configuration----------------
Driver Version:                     3.37
South Bridge:                       VIA vt8233
Revision:                           ISA 0x0 IDE 0x6
Highest DMA rate:                   UDMA100
BM-DMA base:                        0xff00
PCI clock:                          33.3MHz
Master Read  Cycle IRDY:            0ws
Master Write Cycle IRDY:            0ws
BM IDE Status Register Read Retry:  yes
Max DRDY Pulse Width:               No limit
-----------------------Primary IDE-------Secondary IDE------
Read DMA FIFO flush:          yes                 yes
End Sector FIFO flush:         no                  no
Prefetch Buffer:              yes                 yes
Post Write Buffer:            yes                 yes
Enabled:                      yes                 yes
Simplex only:                  no                  no
Cable Type:                   80w                 80w
-------------------drive0----drive1----drive2----drive3-----
Transfer Mode:        PIO       PIO       DMA      UDMA
Address Setup:       30ns     120ns      30ns      30ns
Cmd Active:          90ns      90ns      90ns      90ns
Cmd Recovery:        30ns      30ns      30ns      30ns
Data Active:         90ns     330ns      90ns      90ns
Data Recovery:       30ns     270ns      30ns      30ns
Cycle Time:         120ns     600ns     120ns      30ns
Transfer Rate:   16.6MB/s   3.3MB/s  16.6MB/s  66.6MB/s


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