Re: OT: Damaged harddisk and/or disk controller - ps

[Marty <martyb@ix.netcom.com>]

Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:

> And I have done nasty things to the system, just to see. For example 
> doing aide --update, updatedb, an intensive write process and a 
> CPU-intensive computation process simultaneously. It should put maximum 
> stress on the system, both power-wise, disk use and CPU... Never seen 
> any errors, and certainly no other problems... 
>
> It is just that it isn't detected at startup... 
> "Detecting primary master.... None"

It could be a spin-up problem due to a worn out motor.  This would probably
be reported by smartctl from the package smartmontools.  It's also possible
that your power supply can't handle the powerup surge, and this can also
mimic the motor spin-up problem.  I've recently had this problem.  Try
swapping the power supply, preferable with a more powerful one.