ad0: TIMEOUT - Is my disk dying?

[RW]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:44:33 +0100
Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52 at dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> Christian Walther wrote:
> 
> >>
> >> > > 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
> >>
> 
> Just thought I should point out that you can get errors like this if 
> your disk drive *cable* is faulty or has wiggled loose.
> 
> I spent hours testing a 250Gb drive with manufacturer tools only to 
> solve the problem by replacing the SATA cable.  I suspect the cable
> was fine and had just wiggled loose.  SATA may be thinner, but
> they're still a bugger to route because they pull out so easily.
> Even an IDE cable could have gone faulty or wiggled out; but in 15
> years that's never happened to me whereas I've seen 2 SATA cables
> wiggle out in an untouched tower case in two years.

This happened to me a couple of months ago, the problem went away after
I reseated the SATA connectors.