READ_DMA Error

[Bahman M.]

> > During FreeBSD 6.2 installation, the process failed because
> > of errors like the one below:
> > READ_DMA UDMA .... ICRC error LBA=37505132
> >
> > I managed to install by setting hw.ata.ata_dma=0 at boot time
> > but the same errors occur after installation and at boot time
> > so I had to put hw.ata.ata_dma=0 in loader.conf and now the
> > system is working.
> >
> > I checked my hard disk which a 80GB Western Digital+
> > thoroughly and there were no errors reported (using fsck in
> > single user mode). Also I used to install Fedora Linux on
> > this disk without any problems.
> >
> > It looks that disabling DMA caused my disk to work with lower
> > performance. Am I right? If yes, are there any solutions to
> > eliminate those READ_DMA errors while DMA is enabled?
> >
> > PS:
> > Motherboard: ASUS A7V8X-X
> > CPU: Athlon XP 2500 at 1833MHz
> > $ uname -ai
> > FreeBSD attila 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 10:40:27
> > UTC 2007     root at dessler.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
> >  i386 GENERIC
>
> Typically, I've seen the READ_DMA error when a hard drive is going bad or
> something wrong with the hardware (power supply is failing). But it could be
> as you've described.
I tested with another hard disk, the one on which I'd installed
FreeBSD in the past. I put it on another IDE channel but the same
things happened. Now I wonder if it's my IDE controller which has
problems.

Some information about the hardware:
# dmesg | grep -E "^ac?d[[:digit:]]"
ad0: 76319MB <WDC WD800BB-00CJA1 17.07W17> at ata0-master PIO4
ad1: 19540MB <Maxtor 32049H2 YAC614Y0> at ata0-slave PIO4
acd0: DVDR <DVD RW DRU-820A/1.0b> at ata1-master UDMA66
acd1: DVDROM <DVD-ROM DDU1632/VER BS23> at ata1-slave UDMA33

# sysctl -a | grep ata_dma
hw.ata.ata_dma: 0

# sysctl -a | grep atapi
hw.ata.atapi_dma: 1

Bahman