[5055] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: Harddisk Help!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mr. James W. Laferriere)
Fri Nov 6 01:59:15 1998
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 22:59:45 -0800 (PST)
From: "Mr. James W. Laferriere" <babydr@baby-dragons.com>
Reply-To: "Mr. James W. Laferriere" <babydr@baby-dragons.com>
To: Maarten van Leunen <maartenl@il.fontys.nl>
cc: Linux Scsi Mailing List <linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.981104091728.24963A-100000@eddy>
Hello Maarten,
On Wed, 4 Nov 1998 karchan@eddy.il.fontys.nl wrote:
> 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
^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ooh, OOH, Bad Maarten. (;-)
If this is on an NCR53c8xx series of controllers (which
isn't shown from the below log snippit) use the
ncr53c8xx driver in the kernel . If you need/want the
latest & greatest then goto :
ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/roudier/
READ the README there .
> 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
Hth, JimL
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| James W. Laferriere - Network Engineer - babydr@baby-dragons.com |
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