Wow, Benjamin, your effort to help is definitely more than I could expect from a mailing list .. :)
Thanks for lot: I think I learned a few things with your explanations ... On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 12:16:17AM +0200, Benjamin Cama wrote: > Le jeudi 02 octobre 2008 à 20:17 +0200, Wolfgang Pfeiffer a écrit : > > Could this also be a simple file system damage? > > Errors like that (i.e. in the middle of a DMA interrupt) are not simple > FS damage, I am pretty sure. > > > I was hoping it was just something like that, because this hopefully > > could be "fixed" with a reinstall, and with a previous low-level > > formatting like > > > > dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda (not being sure whether the syntax is > > correct .. ) > > For this kind of low level formatting, I would advise you to dd > from /dev/zero, as the hard drive controller can try to replace bad > sectors if needed when it sees that an all-0 block is written. But when > some sectors begin to fail, others will soon come, in general. That's exactly why I will replace that disk. I shall not take any risks like having to re-install again in a few weeks just because other disk sectors start to break at some point in the future ... > > > Oh, and the Fedora smartctrl found (surprise, surprise .. :) a failure on > > LBA 76724676 and 76724678, too (please see the old log above) ... > > Well, this confirm that the error lies in hardware, not in the file > system itself. > > > I attach the log made on the broken machine via > > smartctrl -a /dev/hda > > So, the very high numbers like Raw_Read_Error_Rate and Seek_Error_Rate > are meaningless, I think, but the numbers in Offline_Uncorrectable and > UDMA_CRC_Error_Count show that some sectors have already been lost. But > what worries me most is the Load_Cycle_Count value : 2898441 is far too > high for a disk, but may look real, as your disk as been spinning for > quite some time (10000+ hours). This roughly corresponds to a > load/unload every 15s : do you here some light "tic tac" sound from your > disk every 15s or so ? IIRC: yes, I think so. Currently 'tho, with the machine being booted via the Fedora CD, I don't hear any clicks, although hdparm -I reports the Advanced power management level being set to 128 ... > For reference, mine, which has a 8000+ hours lifetime, has a count > of 268656 (ten times less ...). If you take the specs from seagate > for your hard drive ( > http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus5400.2_120gb.pdf > ), you'll see it's made for at most 600000 load/unload cycles. That's why I'll want a Seagate again: Just think about what might have happened with disk settings changed to no power management, like you suggested below, with hdparm -B .. :) > > I am worried about it because this is what I saw from a lot of apple > laptops, and as you may have understood, from one of my lost iBook's > hard drive. This made the news some time ago, not especially for apple's > disks, but when Ubuntu was said to be killing hard drives : some vendor > BIOSes did not set the power saving mode of the hard drive "correctly", > which led them to load/unload too often, and kill the hard drive in a > very short time. The first disk shipped with my old Titanium IV PB broke after around 2 years, IIRC ... and the current one (a replacement disk) in that machine, with more than 7100 Power_On_Hours, and a with a Load_Cycle_Count of 366793 probably might fail in the near future, with all the ugly sound I hear from the machine while it is up .. and I disabled Power Management on this machine via hdparm now ... let's see .. :) > AFAIK, OpenFirmware does not set any power saving mode > at all, and neither does OSX, and by default a lot of disk are in a > "maximum" power saving mode, which unloads the hard drive head very > often, thus consuming less energy but shortening the life of the hard > drive. [ ... ] > You can change these settings with the -B option of hdparm, for > example : > hdparm -B254 /dev/hda Let's see whether this is preserved and kept over reboots ... :) > disables power management on most hard drive (the value is drive > dependant, most of the time 255 or 254 disables power savings). I think > this is what is done in laptop-mode package when you set your hard drive > in "no PM" mode. > > > > What do you mean by "see hda7" ? > > > > to "see" in the sense of to "detect" ... > > mac-fdisk detected the damaged partition in the Debian installer, IIRC > > .. > > What I meant is that, if you can "see" some partition in mac-fdisk, you > can see them all. But this doesn't mean the FS on them is not > failing. parted detects that partition, but does not "see" any FS on it, that is, when I type "print" in parted for /dev/hda, there's an empty space for the column where parted is supposed to report the FS for 7 (which should be /dev/hda7). FS is reported for 6 (/home), 5 (/var) and swap for 4. Even hfs+ is detected correctly for #2, where the small OS X partition sits ... > When you said you didn't see hda7 but you did with the others, it > sounded strange to me. > > > No, not that easily .. It's a Powerbook5,8: if I manage to remove the > > disk from it (there must be instructions somewhere on www) I'll > > reinstall a new one. No time to waste, because my old tibook, where > > I'm typing this email, is making strange noises already. Looks like > > I'm in need of quick decisions, besides working hardware ... :) > > Well, the instructions from macfixit are good, I already disassembled a > 12" iBook and a 15" PB with them. And it looks like you will need them > soon ... I found out in the mean time I have bought an extended warranty (3 yrs) from the reseller (Gravis, in DE) where I bought the machine ... let's see what they say when I report them OS X boots, and Linux, on other partitions, does not ... But I'll scrub the whole disk with a dd if=/dev/urandom, and see whether OS X is able to install to it. If it can't, I should be a candidate for warranty, I think .. Thanks again, to everyone :) Benjamin, you helped me learn: Thanks .. :) Regards Wolfgang -- heelsbroke.blogspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
