Cian Cullinan wrote:
Well given the simultaneous errors from both disks, and the all-clear from smartctl, it *really* sounds like a problem external to the disks, I.E.: cables, controller etc.
I'm running the long self-test on the drives now. That will give me a more definitive answer.
The problem does sound external to the disks. Someone else suggested the power supply. I wouldn't suspect both cables to have problems, so that's probably not an issue. The controller is on the MB and I REALLY don't want to have to tear the machine apart to replace it.
The errors have stopped for now. No more errors in the past four hours. At the moment all I can do is keep monitoring it.
On Fri, 2006-09-22 at 13:06 -0400, Bowie Bailey wrote:
Cian Cullinan wrote:
<snip>
The problem does sound external to the disks. Someone else suggested the power supply. I wouldn't suspect both cables to have problems, so that's probably not an issue.
Have you looked inside the PS? What you think of a separate cables may be joined at the base in the PS. And then if one cable has a high resistance short, it affects voltage on both legs. And if the output tap feeding those two wires (even separate wires on the same "bus" or "tap" are "joined at the base" electrically speaking) has a problem ... it appears on both wires.
That said, *usually* problems in the wires are "opens" and you just lose that one "leg".
The controller is on the MB and I REALLY don't want to have to tear the machine apart to replace it.
It *might* be cheaper to insert a PCI controller card than replace the mb.
The errors have stopped for now. No more errors in the past four hours. At the moment all I can do is keep monitoring it.
And whisper sweet nothings into its little electronic ears. :-)
-- Bill
On Friday 22 September 2006 13:06, Bowie Bailey wrote:
The problem does sound external to the disks. Someone else suggested the power supply. I wouldn't suspect both cables to have problems, so that's probably not an issue.
Power supply issues can do real damage to the drives, as well. I had a pair of 250GB drives that have hard errorred sectors thanks to a power supply 'glitching' on me. The drives still work fine otherwise, but they have several dozen sectors each that will never be usable.
On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 09:08 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
Power supply issues can do real damage to the drives, as well. I had a pair of 250GB drives that have hard errorred sectors thanks to a power supply 'glitching' on me. The drives still work fine otherwise, but they have several dozen sectors each that will never be usable.
Most drive manufacturers have a diagnostic/repair utility that have a fair chance of fixing that sort of problem. Unfortunately they tend to only run under windows.
Les Mikesell spake the following on 9/25/2006 2:16 PM:
On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 09:08 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
Power supply issues can do real damage to the drives, as well. I had a pair of 250GB drives that have hard errorred sectors thanks to a power supply 'glitching' on me. The drives still work fine otherwise, but they have several dozen sectors each that will never be usable.
Most drive manufacturers have a diagnostic/repair utility that have a fair chance of fixing that sort of problem. Unfortunately they tend to only run under windows.
Look for the Ultimate boot disk; http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
It has many manufacturer hard drive utilities, and you just need to be able to boot from CD.
On Monday 25 September 2006 17:16, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 09:08 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
Power supply issues can do real damage to the drives, as well. I had a pair of 250GB drives that have hard errorred sectors thanks to a power supply 'glitching' on me. The drives still work fine otherwise, but they have several dozen sectors each that will never be usable.
Most drive manufacturers have a diagnostic/repair utility that have a fair chance of fixing that sort of problem. Unfortunately they tend to only run under windows.
The larger manufacturers have bootable floppy images for most of this sort of thing; most are included with the UltimateBootCD; no Windows required. The Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital utilities can do the low-level sparing needed; in my particular case, the Maxtor diag's sparing routine wasn't able to spare enough sectors, and thus I have irrepairable surface damage; no more spare sectors. But the drive, once badblocks is run, works fine and passed some heavy load testing and data integrity testing (again, when badblocks was run during the mke2fs run using -c). SMART is not a happy camper, though, reporting that the drive's death is imminent; as it has been for the last year that the drive has been in service.....
Unfortunately, this particular 250G Maxtor was a retail drive with only a single year's warranty, and was ten days out of warranty when my power supply ate it. But, really, Maxtor shouldn't have to replace a drive that died due to my cheap power supply, anyway.
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Bowie Bailey -
Lamar Owen -
Les Mikesell -
Scott Silva -
William L. Maltby