ad0: TIMEOUT - Is my disk dying?

[Wood, Russell]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guido Demmenie [mailto:rottweilertje at rottnic.nl]
> Sent: Friday, 30 March 2007 3:15 PM
> To: Wood, Russell
> Cc: FreeBSD Users Questions
> Subject: Re: ad0: TIMEOUT - Is my disk dying?
> 
> 
> On Mar 30, 2007, at 9:09 AM, Wood, Russell wrote:
> 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
> >> questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Guido Demmenie
> >> Sent: Friday, 30 March 2007 3:00 PM
> >> To: Christian Walther
> >> Cc: FreeBSD Users Questions
> >> Subject: Re: ad0: TIMEOUT - Is my disk dying?
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mar 29, 2007, at 11:20 PM, Christian Walther wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I'm seeing a lot of the following messages lately:
> >>>
> >>> Mar 29 21:02:01 pixie kernel: ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1
> >>> retry left) LBA=13554983
> >>> Mar 29 21:02:34 pixie kernel: ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1
> >>> retry left) LBA=35376691
> >>>
> >>
> >> You also might want to give smartmontools a try. This can be found
> >> in the portscollection (sysutils/smartmontools). This will query
> >> the SMART tool built in most IDE drives. You can let the harddrive
> >> do a selfcheck. And gather some statistics from your drive.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Guido
> >
> > When you have a suspected faulty hard drive, the last thing you
> > want to
> > do is use it.
> 
> > - Russell
> 
> Can you tell me why?
> 
> --
> Guido

Sure. If you install software when your hard drive has bad sectors then
the software your installing may be written around those areas, possibly
won't run properly (if at all) and cause the system to become unstable
which would then result in further data loss. Also, bad sectors are like
a disease and continue to `spread' the more it's used.

- Russell


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