Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Harddisk trouble ... or not yet?

[Andrea Conti <alyf@alyf.net>]

> ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA
> ata1.00: cmd c8/00:80:00:3f:c1/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 65536 in
>          res 51/84:4f:00:3f:c1/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
> ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
> ata1.00: error: { ICRC ABRT }
> ata1: soft resetting link
> ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
> ata1: EH complete
> ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6

I think you have driver issues. Might also be the cabling, but I doubt
it as faulty SATA cables are in my experience quite rare.

WD drives are known not to get along too well with VIA SATA1 controllers:

http://www.viaarena.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38871
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-794855.html

What kernel version are you using?
What does the kernel say when it first detects the disk?

Do you get the same errors under a recent kernel (try the latest gentoo
install cd) ?

My experience with WD "advanced format" drives has been positive so far,
especially considering how cheap they are... The only gripe I have is
that they report not only having a 512B *logical* sector size in the
response to ATA INFO commands (which is fine, as they have a translation
layer), but also a 512B *physical* sector size, which is wrong and
causes partitioning tools to use the wrong alignment.
All the five 1TB drives I have behave this way, and from what I read
this is not an isolated behavior...

andrea