> We have lost one Western Digital Caviar 31600 (1.6GB) IDE drive and
> one WD Caviar (700MB) IDE drive. Now, when I say lost, I mean that when
> the system is rebooted, the disk sounds like it is physcially broke. There
> is a periodic clanging noise, as if one of the drive components is
> actually damaged. At this point, we don't get past the BIOS.
>
> These two drives ran for approximately one month each
> before dieing. Prior to this, we noticed in our system messages:
>
> kernel: hdb: read_intr: status=0x4b { DriveRead DataRequest Index Error }
> " " read_intr: error=0x04 { Drive Status Error}
> " ide0: do_ide_reset: success
[snipped]
Did either/both of these drives have active swap spaces on them?
I've just retired a 1.2G Maxtor that was beginning to pick up
similar kernel error messages after several years in service
but it served as my swap volume among other things. It recieved
a brutal beating on a regular basis. Unfortunately perhaps,
its replacement is (already) a WD Caviar 22100 2.1G.
As to WD Caviar reliabilty, I have another WD Caviar 21600 1.6G
that is now my root drive. Its about6 months old and so far so good,
however, I just discovered that its slave jumper setting causes it
to hang when accessed (still under warranty so its headed back to WD).
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John Heil
South Coast Software
1-714-774-6952 or 1-714-774-6755
kerndev@johnhscs.webworldinc.net
johnhscs@webworldinc.com
scsftw19@mail.idt.net
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