Linux with AHA-2940AU die everyday

[Mike Bilow]

Doug Ledford wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 DL> This really sounds like a drive with a few bad sectors
 DL> causing problems each night.  Try getting into the Adaptec
 DL> BIOS and running a verify media operation on the drive
 DL> (Ctrl-A, then Disk Utilities, then select the drive at ID 6,
 DL> then Verify Media).  If it gives you any messages about
 DL> fixed problems, then run that command over again until the
 DL> messages all go away and it completes successfully.

Another thing to look for is whether the drive has Automatic Write Reallocation
(AWRE) enabled.  This causes the drive to map out a bad sector if it checks bad
after attempting to write to it.  Several manufacturers ship their drives with
AWRE disabled, although I can't imagine why.  Scsiinfo or a similar tool can be
used to manipulate the AWRE setting directly and to write this information into
the non-volatile configuration area so that it will persist across power cycles
of the drive.  Scsiinfo can also be used to check the grown defects list to see
if areas are actually being mapped out.

If AWRE is disabled, then Linux will in the normal course of events keep trying
to write to the same bad sectors and keep getting the same errors.  Running
Adaptec's "Verify Media" ultility, as Doug suggests, would fix the problem for
a while, but it requires taking the system down completely.
 
-- Mike



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-aic7xxx" in the body of the message