hd timeouts.

[Lowell Gilbert]

Perttu Laine <plaine at gmail.com> writes:

> I'm just wondering what does this means. Dying harddisk or something
> else? From kernel log:
> 
> -cut-
> > ad0: 28629MB <ST330621A/3.39> [58168/16/63] at ata0-master PIO4
> > ad5: 190782MB <WDC WD2000JB-00FUA0/15.05R15> [387621/16/63] at ata2-slave PIO4
> > ad5: TIMEOUT - READ_MUL retrying (2 retries left) LBA=382096511
> > ad5: FAILURE - READ_MUL timed out

It could be a hard disk, but it could be other things too.

If the hardware hasn't been touched since the last time it worked,
then a failing disk would be a pretty safe guess.  If not, or
especially if this is a new configuration, there are a few things to
try first.  One is to make sure that there is a master on the ATA bus
containing ad5; the ATA specs say that you're not supposed to have a
slave unless there's a master (the quickest way to fix it would be to
move the disk from slave to master).  

And of course, cable problems are a *very* frequent issue.