Re: OT: Damaged harddisk and/or disk controller

From: Kjetil Kjernsmo (kjetil_at_kjernsmo.net)
Date: 10/19/05

  • Next message: Bill Marcum: "Re: fail to load Gnome" 
    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 23:57:18 +0200

    On onsdag 19 oktober 2005, 23:35, Alvin Oga wrote:
    > hi ya kjetil
     
    Hey, and thanks for the quick response! :-)

    > i'd replace the ide cables ... with new 80 conductor cable

    Yup, that was the first thing I did... :-) It is the cheapest thing to
    do, so I did that some time ago. No effect...

    > > What I see is that if the primary master disk isn't detected, the
    > > primary slave isn't either.
    >
    > that'd depend on:
    > - the jumper settings on your disk
    > - the manufacturer of the disk
    > - the disk controller
    >
    > - it is normally, supposed to find the slave disk, even if the master
    > is dead or non-existent

    Yup! But I mean, if the controller itself was damaged, you'd expect it
    to find neither...

    >
    > > However, if I pull the IDE cable from the
    > > primary master, the primary slave is detected.
    >
    > that probably means your jumpers on the disk is not right
    > - set the jumpers on the disk to be both cable select
    > or explicity set master on the disk at the end of the cable

    Hmmm, I think I have that right... *looks inside the running box*. Yup,
    jumpers are correct on both disks.... Also, the problem happens just
    randomly, on bootup (this is a noisy box sitting under my bed, I turn
    it off at night), and if it had anything to do with jumpers, I would be
    expecting consistent problems, not something that would appear after
    the box had been stable for a couple of years and with no changes... It
    feels more likely it is due to wear and tear, but what is getting
    worn...?

    > using master on the middle of the cable can create whackyness

    Yup, it is on the end. Slave is on the middle.

    > > The primary disk, a Maxtor 40 GB disk, has been a bit unreliable
    > > from the start,
    >
    > maybe you have a bad disk, but is it unlikely...
    > and also depends on where yo bought the disk from ...
    > mom-n-pop-me-too stores vs an iso9001 certified outfits where they
    > supposedly don't throw things around or do your 6' drop tests before
    > shipping

    Hehe, no, it was the latter, a it was a well-recognized store, but they
    were caught shipping disks that had been returned as new. People got
    disks with data on. Whooops... So, well, I can't be really sure, but at
    the time I bought this, 40 GB disks were the latest and greatest, so it
    isn't very likely they could have had time to ship it too many times...

    However, there are things... For one thing, I initially mounted the disk
    with the wrong screws, so it probably had a lot more vibrations its two
    first weeks than what was good for it. That's when I found the right
    screws. Also, Norway's electrical grid is really b0rked, so the chances
    this box has seen non-sinusoidal AC is pretty high... :-(

    >
    > 90% of the time .. its just bad cables and jumpers or bad mb
    > (controllers)

    Well, I have excluded cables and jumpers as the cause, so then, it is
    the controllers... But if it was the controller, why would it detect
    the slave when the master was dead...?

    Cheers,

    Kjetil 

    -- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Programmer / Astrophysicist / Ski-orienteer / Orienteer / Mountaineer
kjetil@kjernsmo.net   
Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/     OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC
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