[5049] in linux-scsi channel archive
Harddisk Help!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (karchan@eddy.il.fontys.nl)
Wed Nov 4 04:09:03 1998
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 09:58:58 +0100 (CET)
From: <karchan@eddy.il.fontys.nl>
Reply-To: Maarten van Leunen <maartenl@il.fontys.nl>
To: Linux Scsi Mailing List <linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu>
I'm going totally bananas here. Let me tell you the problem.
I've got three SCSI-2 harddisks. They all gave MEDIUM Errors and IO Read
Errors and stuff some of the time.
NCR 53c7,8xx
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: DEC Model: RZ28 (C) DEC Rev: 442D
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
Vendor: QUANTUM Model: FIREBALL ST3.2S Rev: 0F0C
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 03 Lun: 00
Vendor: DEC Model: RZ26L (C) DEC Rev: 442D
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
So I did a nice sformat on a notorious one which created a few
MEDIUM Errors in my log files, but sformat completed with "0 defects".
(at the same time some more MEDIUM errors displayed in my logfiles)
So I tried "badblocks" on said harddisk. Was writing patterns all over the
disk and stuff. Completed with 0 defects.
(why doesn't badblock and sformat detect bad blocks and stuff, if I get
medium errors and ioerrors in my logfiles?)
Okay, the disks seem fine. I just seem to get Medium errors every now and
then.
---
At one time, I tried to compare (cmp -c) two files (270 MB big files), on
different harddrives which should be essentially the same as one was a
copy of the other.
I tried the said compare 8 times. It only complained on 2 of those 8
tries that there was a difference of a few bytes. (say 20 bytes) (Funny
thing is that during the compare there were no MEDIUM Errors or IO Read
errors written in the log/messages)
One of the things that seem a bit odd is that these MEDIUM errors only
appear during large harddisktransfers. During normal operation I do not
have any problems. (Could be because I just don't access bad areas during
normal operation though)
Theories:
- the Harddrives are totally broken (perhaps local caching on the
harddisks is broken?)
- the SCSI Card is broken (has problems handling large amounts of data?)
- my computer's memory is broken (strange errors though if that's the
case)
Any ideas, anyone?
--
Maarten van Leunen
maartenl@il.fontys.nl
http://www.il.fontys.nl/~maartenl
http://lok.il.fontys.nl
('The most important thing about having goals is having one.'
Geoffrey F. Abert)
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
