Re: ata seek error: should i worry?

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Tom Vier wrote:

> under heavy writes, i get this:
> 
> hde: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
> hde: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
> hde: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
> hde: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
> hde: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
> hde: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
> 
> i've tried two different drives, two different cables (one that came w/ a
> drive and one that came w/ the card - regular ribbons). same problem. this
> happens w/o enabling ANY hdparm options.

if you used the "cheap cable"... and you're drives are ata66/ata100
than you might get those "dying disks errors"
 
if you have sensitive motherboard ide interfaces, you'll
get those errors

if that ide controller ( /dev/hde ) is out-of-whack, you'd get
those errors too

if you told the disk there is another disk on beside itself,
than you'd get whacky errros too
	- western digitals are particulary annoying at that
	( standalone vs cable select vs master vs master w/ slave 
	( all of the above does make a big difference 

> it doesn't seem to cause any problems. no fs corruption and no file data
> corruption.

give it time ... you are guaranteed to see whacky errors starting
to pop up ... you might not notice it yet, because the problems
are in other files you're not yet using
 
> is this error msg printed whenever there's a dma xfer that needs to be
> retried, or is it printed after the retries fail?

its when it tries to read a track/sector and the signals are not clean
or the disk is in fact dying/dead

also make sure your ide controller is supported by the kernel

c ya
alvin