Strange SATA problem - data corrupting

[pete wright]

On 9/12/05, Tomas Randa <lists at hosting50.cz> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have very strange problem with my FreeBSD box and Promise PDC20579
> SATA controller:
> 
> atapci0 at pci0:7:0: class=0x010400 card=0x3574105a chip=0x3574105a
> rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
> vendor = 'Promise Technology Inc'
> device = 'Promise SATAII150 579 (tm) IDE Controller'
> class = mass storage
> subclass = RAID
> 
> ad4: 381554MB <ST3400832AS/3.02> [775221/16/63] at ata2-master SATA150
> 
> Problem is, that every HDD connected to this controller is corrupting
> data. For example: I copy good tar.gz archive to this drive, and if I do
> decompression immediately after copying, there is no problem, but if I
> wait for example 10 minutes, then decompression ends with CRC error:
> 
> box# gzip -d ./2005-09-11.tar.gz
> gzip: ./2005-09-11.tar.gz: invalid compressed data--crc error
> gzip: ./2005-09-11.tar.gz: invalid compressed data--length error
> 
> I know, that problem is not in HDD or CPU/RAM, but in controller. Could
> it be a driver problem or not? I tried to turn off soft-updates, but
> with no change. I have no any ideas what to do or what to try.
> 
> Thanks a lot for any answer or opinion.



Are you sure that it is not an issue with the drives? Just to make sure, you 
have attached these drives to another, known working system and seen the 
same issues. Also, have you made sure that the cabling to the drives 
themselves are not broken, and are seated properlly. To be sure, I'd grab a 
set of working sata cables and test out again. Finally, if you have done 
this hardware trouble shooting already and are sure that it is not a 
hardware issue with your disks/cabling/controller itself I would post the 
version of FreeBSD you are running (uname -ar) along with a dmesg to the 
list.

-p

-- 
~~o0OO0o~~
Pete Wright
www.nycbug.org <http://www.nycbug.org>
NYC's *BSD User Group