Varian wrote:
I've been having an extremely hard time using the on board SATA controller on my nvidia based board. I have two 160gig Maxtor SATA drives attached to the on board controller, setup as software raid0. The problem is the array is extremely unreliable, where I'm getting constant I/O errors like:
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00040000 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 20010007 sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00040000 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 20010000
I've wiped and scanned the drives with the Maxtor diagnostic utilities which passes both drives with flying colors. I've had no issues when i was doing the same thing with Suse 10.1, the same setup was 100% reliable. I also have two 160gig Maxtor ATA133 drive in the machine on the on board PATA controller and they work totally reliable. I'm wondering if anyone else is having a problem with on board nvidia sata controller thats part of the nforce4 chipset? btw its using the sata_nv driver. Also when I reboot it works fine for a few hours and then begins to act up again. Its not a heat problem, the drives have a working fan directly blowing on the drives, and the case its in has very good airflow.
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9F0 ctl 0xBF2 bmdma 0xD000 irq 193 ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x970 ctl 0xB72 bmdma 0xD008 irq 193 scsi0 : sata_nv ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) ata1.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 320173056 sectors: LBA48 ata1.00: ata1: dev 0 multi count 16 ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 scsi1 : sata_nv ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) ata2.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 320173056 sectors: LBA48 ata2.00: ata2: dev 0 multi count 16 ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6Y160M0 Rev: YAR5 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 SCSI device sda: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB) sda: Write Protect is off sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back SCSI device sda: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB) sda: Write Protect is off sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back sda: sda1 sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6Y160M0 Rev: YAR5 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 SCSI device sdb: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB) sdb: Write Protect is off sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write back SCSI device sdb: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB) sdb: Write Protect is off sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write back sdb: sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdb ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APSJ] enabled at IRQ 22 GSI 17 sharing vector 0xC9 and IRQ 17 ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:11.0[A] -> Link [APSJ] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 201 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:11.0 to 64 ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9E0 ctl 0xBE2 bmdma 0xE400 irq 201 ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x960 ctl 0xB62 bmdma 0xE408 irq 201 scsi2 : sata_nv ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) scsi3 : sata_nv ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
Varian
Varian,
there is a known problem with Maxtor drives and nForce4 chipsets (and the problem appears on other chipsets as well, I see it on Intel 5000X, but less often). It can be fixed with a firmware update to the disk; you'll have to send email to Maxtor (that's Seagate now) support and they'll send you the firmware back by email. The "good" firmware is VA111680, the "bad" VA111630 if I remember correctly. This at least applies to 6V250F0 (and other sizes) and probably 7Vxxxxx drives.
HTH, Kay