GEOM_PART: Integrity check failed (ada2, MBR)

[John-Mark Gurney]

Ronald F. Guilmette wrote this message on Sat, May 17, 2014 at 17:00 -0700:
> In message <20140517162513.GG43976 at funkthat.com>, 
> John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
> 
> >Ronald F. Guilmette wrote this message on Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:38 -0700:
> >> 
> >> In message <20140516130346.GB43976 at funkthat.com>, 
> >> John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
> >> >Wow, I just noticed this...  FreeBSD is only seeing it as a 31MB drive
> >> >instead of a 1TB drive...  This is probably the problem...
> >> 
> >> OHHHHH!  Wow!  Yea.  That is MESSED UP!
> >> ...
> 
> >Can you get a memstick of 11-CURRENT from:
> >https://www.freebsd.org/snapshots/
> >and get the output of:
> >camcontrol identify ada2 -v
> >from a boot of the memstick?  mav thinks that it might be an issue w/
> >HPA, and this should help track it down.
> 
> I don't think that there is any need anymore for me to do the above
> steps.  I am now convinced that I do know what has caused this rather
> remarkable (and remarkably annoying) problem.
> 
> I had forgotten all about this, until now, but there is apparently a
> known problem where older (pre-2010) Gigabyte motherboards will in
> fact create a Host Protected Area (HPA) on the ``first'' ATA drive
> in a given system, *and* that in cases where the drive is 1TB or larger,
> the result will be a drive that self-identifies as being only 31 (or 32)
> megabytes big.  (You can google for this known problem and you'll find a
> _lot_ of references to it.)
> 
> The specific 1 TB drive on which I experienced this problem had been
> working just fine with no problems whatsoever on another system that I
> have here.  However I made the mistake of trying to put it into my #2
> desktop system, which is based on a vintage 2006 Gigabyte motherboard.
> 
> I now firmly believe that this caused the specific form of corruption
> that now afflicts the drive in question.
> 
> I already have sought, and have already been provided with the steps
> that I need to undertake in order to "repair" the apparent capacity of
> the drive in question, and I am already making plans to replace my
> *&^%$#@ Gigabyte motherboard with something different with all due
> haste.
> 
> I will *never* purchase another Gigabyte motherboard as long as I live!
> (In addition to this extraordinarily problem, it also has had a number
> of obscure problems booting various things from USB-attached mass
> storage.)
> 
> Anyway, my thanks to all involved for their time and effort considering
> my unfortunate plight.  Who knew that just connecting an otherwise
> flawless hard drive to a specific kind of motherboard would instantly
> render it effectively brain dead?

Wow, this is sooo BAD...  Motherboards should never touch a HD like
this w/o consent from the user...  Though of course the other thing
is that Gigabyte's QA is soo bad that they didn't catch such a basic
bug in testing...

but this does sound like your issue though, glad you found it...

And this is useful info for others too, Thanks.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."