[NTLUG:Discuss] Dead Drive?

[Rev. wRy]

Kelledin wrote:

> Have you tried turning DMA off?  If that works, you've either got 
> a flaky kernel or flaky hardware.  

Yeah, i've turned off everything via hdparm that can be turned off.

I've long suspected the chipset (older ALI) has been corrupting as it 
writes to the drive, and have been sort of waiting on this day. 
Supposedly, the kernel issues with this particular chipset had been 
resolved for quite some time, but since everything I could originally 
find was written in Taiwanese, I'm not really sure that it's not just 
best to move forward with a different machine entirely.

> Flaky hardware could be the 
> motherboard, it could be the hard drive, or it could even be a 
> new card arrangement.

Well, the box sits headless in a restaurant office under a shelf, so 
it's not a new hardware configuration and it doesn't see much abuse. 
It's sole function is to pass sales figures to our office via some 
custom scripts, so it's not like it's overworked either.  It's corrupted 
some in the past, but I was always able to bring it back to life via fsck.

> Or...it might even be the cable.  80-conductor IDE cable is very, 
> very sensitive to folding, stacking, creasing, excess cable 
> length, and EMI in general.

I'm very much leaning towards hardware (mobo or disk).  It was a 
throwaway box when I got it - it will now be thrown away. ;)

Ry