[olug] Hard Drive Failure?

[ktb]

On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 04:49:37PM -0500, William E. Kempf wrote:
> > From: ktb <xyf at nixnotes.org>
> > On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 10:26:30AM -0500, William E. Kempf wrote:
> > > Had a bad weekend.  Some of you know from the last Install Fest that I had a HD going bad.  Well, I replaced it last week with a brand new 80 GB Western Digital.  From the very beginning I was nervous... the drive seemed fairly loud to me (not the spinning of the platters, but the movement of the head) and it sure *seemed* to be running slower than my previous drive when I expected it to be faster.  But it appeared to be running properly and a forced fsck didn't reveal any problems (that's the extent of my diagnotic abilities using Linux, so if there's other things I should have done, let me know).
> > > 
> > > It ran for most of the week.  Twice during the week I had the entire system lock up, but didn't know what the culprit was.  Then Friday things started to get worse.  I had to reboot because the system was locked up, and though the OS would come up, it ran so slowly as to be basically unusable.  I fought with trying to diagnose the problem for a little while, and another reboot resulted in the error "no drq after issuing write" displayed by the kernel.  Eventually I also received errors such as (and this is from memory, so not 100% accurate) "dma_intr status=0x61 {DeviceReady DeviceFault Error}" and the same thing basically but with status=0x04.  Amazingly, on two different reboots the BIOS couldn't even detect the drive, and I had to do a cold boot to get the BIOS to recognize the drive's presence again.
> > > 
> > <snip>
> > 
> > Please set your mailer to wrap at 72 characters as it raises havoc with
> > those of us who use text based mailers.
> 
> Sorry, but until I can get this system running again, I'm basically stuck with using Cox's webmail, which I can't configure in this way.
> 
> > I would try looking at your dma settings.  Do a search for "hdparm" and
> > your specific error message.  This might also be of use -
> 
> I can't use hdparm if I can't boot to the drive ;).
>

Sorry there was so much info to wade though I really didn't have the
time to read though it all.

You could use a rescue disk or drive from another computer, mount the
troublesome dive and use hdparm.

If the drive is intermittently being seen by the bios then I would do the
following:

Put another drive in to see if you have the same problem.
If the second drive is fine then take your new one back.
If you experience the same problem with the second drive try the
secondary IDE controller.  
If you still have the problem with the second drive on the secondary
controller, get a new motherboard.
hth,
kent 

-- 
To know the truth is to distort the Universe.
                      Alfred N. Whitehead (adaptation)