Re: bizarre hard drive failure

In article <1180805122.479484.125550@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dan Lenski wrote:
On Jun 1, 3:42 pm, B'ichela <mdal...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I dont know much about IDE/ATA/SATA but I do kknow SCSI and if
your controller does not send the spinup command the drive will sit
there reporting Not Ready errors as the motor never gets "Hey! Wake up
you lazy piece of hardware! its a New Day!" I can do the same with
SCSI and tell my Bios not to send the Spin up command and I get
similar errors.

Yes, you were right! This turned out to be an INCREDIBLY obscure BIOS
bug: most BIOSes (as well as the Linux kernel) don't know what to do
with a disk that doesn't spin up automatically, so they declare it to
be dead.
And you are welcome! Glad this old SCSI lass could give you
some clues. ;) As for your Bios/Cmos if you can, flash it with the
latest updates. may or may not help but I don't think it would hurt
either. If your SATA controller is similar to my CMOS/BIOS on my
AHA2940UW card it may have its own configuration screen to allow you
to have it do the spin up for you. Might want to check your
manual/Manufactures website to see if it can. Never know if you get
another one of those "dead" drives and want to have your bios fire the
start spin command by default.
BTW it isn't a bug, It simply wasn not expected that someone
would want to do something so SCSI on a ATA drive. or for that matter
in a home/office PC.

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B'ichela

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