[CentOS] USB drive fails at sector 0xFFFFFFF

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 6:44 PM, Kenneth Porter <shiva at sewingwitch.com> wrote:
> I'm backing up to a NTFS partition on an external USB drive with dump. I'm
> seeing failures in /var/log/messages reading sector 0xFFFFFFF that cause the
> verify pass to fail. Are there any known problems in the USB driver?
>
> Kernel via uname -a:
>
> Linux segw2.mpa.lan 2.6.18-92.1.6.el5 #1 SMP Wed Jun 25 13:49:24 EDT 2008
> i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> Message reported. (Note the number 268435455, which is 0xFFFFFFF, and occurs
> every time I see this happen. But a subsequent attempt to read this region
> with dd succeeds, so it appears to be intermittent, or dependent on some
> other precondition.)
>
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: Device not ready: <6>: Current:
> sense key: Not Ready
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel:     Add. Sense: Logical unit not ready, cause
> not reportable
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel:
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector
> 268435455
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block
> 33554424
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: Device not ready: <6>: Current:
> sense key: Not Ready
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel:     Add. Sense: Logical unit not ready, cause
> not reportable
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel:
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector
> 268435455
> Sep  7 10:48:39 segw2 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block
> 33554424

My Newbie guess is that the device has an intermittent problem at
sector 268435455 and it is failing intermittently at that location.
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can answer your question about
the USB driver. Do you have any Diagnostics for that USB drive that
you can run on it? If not, see if you can download diagnostics from
the web site of the manufacturer. Maybe a problem at 33554424 also?