As a quick fix, I changed the partition cylinder boundaries to avoid the
first, oh say, 10 cylinders (wanted to be on the safe side), it formatted
okay after that, but now it can't find the superblock and will not mount.
I have not tried to reformat yet...
I'm DYING to know for SURE what the real initial cause of the damage was.
On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Jeremey Barrett wrote:
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> > We are running Linux Redhat 3.0.3 (1.2.13 kernel) using Cyrix 586.
> > 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
> >
> > Now, my question is, can (or is it remotely possible) linux be
> > writing something out to the WD IDE drives to break the drive. The
> > analogy being, that you can write to a video controller and cause
> > damage to a monitor. One of our people have suggested that Linux is
> > writing to sector 0 of the WD IDE drive.
>
> I had the same _exact_ problem with an 810M drive. It was because the
> drive was a piece of junk. I know many people who have had similar
> problems, even on non-linux machines, with Western Digital drives.
> I imagine their testing labs used the equivalent of a DOS box to test
> with.
>
> - --
> =-----------------------------------------------------------------------=
> Jeremey Barrett VeriWeb Internet Corp.
> Senior Software Engineer http://www.veriweb.com/
>
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