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#284839 - 27/07/2006 17:41

Hard Drive IO Errors

Verteggio
stranger

Registered: 02/10/2000
Posts: 39
Loc: Atlanta, GA USA

Greetings!

I'm a long time Mk2 owner (almost 6 years!), though it's been awhile since I've visit the forum. However, to my dismay I think my hard drive is on its way out....

Short and to the point -- fsck is showing sector errors. Results are:

Code:


empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay /dev/hda4
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda4 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x40
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 524448
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x40
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 524456
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x40
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 524456
Error reading block 65557 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while doing inode scan.  Ignore error? yes

Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/hda4: 4525/92160 files (5.6% non-contiguous), 2854217/2926602 blocks
empeg:/empeg/bin#

Cable and related everything is... oh, and the familiar "hard drive scratching of death" is evident on bootup if you listen carefully. However, that appears to have gotten better with manually rebuilding the database......hmmmm

Anyways, is there anything I can do to prolong the life of the hard drive? Or is it time for an 'upgrade'?

_________________________
--verteggio

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#284840 - 27/07/2006 19:42 Re: Hard Drive IO Errors [Re: Verteggio]
mlord carpal tunnel Registered: 29/08/2000 Posts: 14493 Loc: Canada	Those are genuine "bad sector" errors. You can fix them by overwriting the bad sectors with zeros (or anything, really), which should cause the on-drive firmware to automatically remap some of its spare good sectors in place of the bad ones. The simplest way to overwrite them is to destroy everything on the drive and reinstall software music afterwards. If you're up to it, then here's the command to type after hitting control^C on the serial port: cat /dev/zero >/dev/hda To selectively overwrite the bad sectors is trickier --> there's still no standard utility for it. I generally just code up 10-20 lines of "C" whenever I need that, but I never seem to release a more general purpose utility for it.. Cheers
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#284841 - 27/07/2006 19:42 Re: Hard Drive IO Errors [Re: Verteggio]
tfabris carpal tunnel Registered: 20/12/1999 Posts: 31597 Loc: Seattle, WA	All of those symptoms you just descrbed: The I/O errors, the click of death, the need to rebuild the database... All of those can be caused by an intermittent connection between the motherboard and the drive. So rule out those problems first before assuming the drive is bad. Drives can, and do, go bad, so it may be time for an upgrade. But definitely check the usual stuff first. _________________________ Tony Fabris
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#284842 - 27/07/2006 21:35 Re: Hard Drive IO Errors [Re: mlord]
Verteggio stranger Registered: 02/10/2000 Posts: 39 Loc: Atlanta, GA USA	Thanks mlord I was wondering if rebuilding the drive might work, but wanted to see if there was something I could do that would avoid re-loading all my music <g> (and I wouldn't know how to code something to write to just those sectors) Curious though... why wouldn't the hard drive remap those sectors on its own when it encountered them? Not knowing much about hard drive mechanics, what would the difference be from that compared to writting zero'd data like you mentioned? Reason I ask is that the only time I have problems is when trying to upload music, which in essence would be writting to the disk. It fails, causing emplode to be hung / fail with errors _________________________ --verteggio
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#284843 - 27/07/2006 21:40 Re: Hard Drive IO Errors [Re: tfabris]
Verteggio stranger Registered: 02/10/2000 Posts: 39 Loc: Atlanta, GA USA	Re: "the usual stuff" Yea, I tried all of that already, though my post didn't quite communicate that in english! (it was the "Cable and related everything is..." part) The cable and connectors are all fine, and the boot log doesn't show anything else out of the ordinary. I don't mind replacing the hard drive -- I think it's the longest I've ever had one in service -- but hey, if there's some way to fix it then I'm all for it. _________________________ --verteggio
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#284844 - 27/07/2006 22:32 Re: Hard Drive IO Errors [Re: Verteggio]
mlord carpal tunnel Registered: 29/08/2000 Posts: 14493 Loc: Canada	Quote: Curious though... why wouldn't the hard drive remap those sectors on its own when it encountered them? Not knowing much about hard drive mechanics, what would the difference be from that compared to writting zero'd data like you mentioned? Well, it will remap them on its own the very next time you write something to those sectors. But it cannot do so until you write to them, because if it did then you might not know that the current contents have been corrupted.. Cheers Edited by mlord (27/07/2006 22:50)
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