[wellylug] Testing hard disks

[Volker Kuhlmann]

> - when the file system is really messed up (usually from previous
>   corruptions due to hardware failures, so that it points at blocks that
>   don't exist); or

Yes, but then the syslog msg is different, it actually says that the
requested block is outside the partition boundary (or something to that
effect). As you say, definitely fixed by a mkfs.

> - when there's some sort of DMA issue.

Hm. Yes all the errors are DMA errors:

Sep 16 09:58:10 Rescue kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Sep 16 09:58:10 Rescue kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1029694, sector=65704
Sep 16 09:58:10 Rescue kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:02 (hda), sector 65704

Sep 16 10:00:30 Rescue kernel: hda: DMA disabled

Sep 16 10:00:35 Rescue kernel: hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
Sep 16 10:00:35 Rescue kernel: hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1029696, sector=65796
Sep 16 10:00:35 Rescue kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:02 (hda), sector 65796

But turning DMA off makes no difference. And the whole box has run
flawlessly for months without trouble, with DMA on. A hard disk without
DMA is not that useful. Besides, DMA works fine on the other 9G
partition.

> going on, but I'd expect that badblocks -w, which simply writes to each
> block, flushes the cache, and reads it back in again (4 times, with 4
> different patterns) would trigger the same issues as an I/O install,
> since it's going through the same hardware calls.

That's what I would have expected too. Fact is, badblocks -w finds nothing
wrong, neither does reading the whole partition with dd, after having it
nulled out. Before nulling it out reading it with dd would throw one
error after the other, with the errors being clumped together in some
range, and other block ranges being error free.

Volker

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