problems with WD2500KS SATAII Drive

[lmilano]

(note: I updated the title of the thread, as it seems this is a WD2500KS specific problem)

Hi All

Now it's my time to ask for help.

I just added a second SATA drive to my system, and I am having nasty problems mounting it. This is the third disk in the system (2 SATAS and one IDE)

The new drive has been successfully partitioned with gparted. However, when I mount a partition and try to copy data over the new disk, it fails.

The error message I have been seeing is confusing. Some times it seems to indicate that the fs is readonly. Sometimes, that there is no room in the device. I am mounting the partitions with the System Settings tool. I mount them as ext3 (as they are), and I don't choose readonly. As a mount point though, instead of using the /media/sd1, /media/sd2, etc automatically added by kubuntu, I am typing in /new_home , /new_root , that is, custom mount points in / . Oddly enough, I just noticed that it seems that data seem to be copied to the wrong place. For example:

/new_home is mounted in /dev/sdb3 (NEW SATA drive).
/ is mounted in /dev/sda1

When I copy a large amount of data to /new_home (after mounting it), instead of filling /dev/sdb3 , the data is trying to fill the root directory ! (/dev/sda1). This operation fails because there is not enough space in /dev/sda1.

So, it seems as if the mountpoint is being treated as a regular directory in the root directory of the system (as opposed to a real mount point, representing another partition).

Why is that ? I have a few candidates:

* maybe in kubuntu Dapper you need to use /media/whatever as a mountpoint ? (I've been mounting partitions for years with no problems)

* maybe this is a RAID issue ? The MoBo has a RAID controller, that I haven't configured at all. I have no experience with RAID, whatsoever

* maybe this is a hardware problem ? This is a SATA II disk, on a SATA controller, I had to revert the disk back to SATA with a Jumper

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[penguin.ch]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

For starters, you may check the contents of /etc/mtab where the actually mounted partitions are listed "the way they are" - whereas in /etc/fstab the partitions are listed (if at all) "the way they should be" ... in other words: try to mount the partitions in question, than access both files mentioned and post their contents (as a whole) to this forum. Hopefully, this additional information will prove helpful in sorting things out.

However, in cases like these I would strongly prefer to mount "by hand" (read: by means of the console command mount -v) - for the sole reason / purpose of achieving as much system feedback (error messages and the like) as possible, therewith supporting the attempt to narrow down what is going wrong ... (as handy as graphical interfaces may be in cases of success, as baffling they can get when things start to fail).

Birdy

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

For starters, you may check the contents of /etc/mtab

That's great advise Birdy

I'll give it a shot tonight , thanks so much!

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

Let me just add something (in case anyone is reading). My idea at this point is to not use RAID of any kind. I'd like to configure the two SATA disks as regular disks.

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

Ok, I just mounted the problematic second SATA, copied recursively a bunch of files, and at some point I get an Input/Output error:

root@grisell:/home# cp -rP * /media/newhome/
cp: writing `/media/newhome/lmilano/Video/DVD/2006/05_julio_agosto.iso': Input/output error
cp: cannot create regular file `/media/newhome/lmilano/Video/DVD/2006/03_cumple_santi.iso': Read-only file system
[a bunch of similar "read-only file system" lines follow.

This problem occured after copying 18 Gb of data:

grisell: ~> df -h
Filesystem      Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      9.0G 5.1G 3.5G 60% /
varrun        379M 96K 379M 1% /var/run
varlock       379M 4.0K 379M 1% /var/lock
procbususb      10M 148K 9.9M 2% /proc/bus/usb
udev         10M 148K 9.9M 2% /dev
devshm        379M  0 379M 0% /dev/shm
lrm         379M 18M 362M 5% /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/volatile
/dev/hda1       38G 31G 6.4G 83% /media/hda1
/dev/sda6       64G 33G 31G 52% /home
/dev/sdb3      209G 18G 181G 9% /media/newhome

Here is fstab:

grisell: ~> more /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options>   <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/hda5 -- converted during upgrade to edgy
# UUID=cefc5ef6-7ab9-461e-af56-8e5efa0df9ea / ext3 nouser,defaults,errors=remount-ro,atime,auto,rw,de
v,exec,suid 0 1
# /dev/hda1 -- converted during upgrade to edgy
UUID=d6584587-7f7f-4246-a645-0391645618a0 /media/hda1 ext3 nouser,defaults,loop,atime,auto,rw,dev,exe
c,suid 0 2
# /dev/sda1 -- converted during upgrade to edgy
UUID=e1ce301c-55c8-11d9-81ef-fb07a9145139 / ext3 nouser,defaults,errors=remount-ro,atime,auto,rw,dev,
exec,suid 0 1
# /dev/sda6 -- converted during upgrade to edgy
UUID=2efe4cc8-542a-11d9-81ef-4b7f989210df /home ext3 nouser,defaults,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 2
# /dev/sda5 -- converted during upgrade to edgy
UUID=4cb88bdc-69c8-475c-b0d1-35815b65f4ee none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 auto user,atime,noauto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
[similar items for cdrom]
# /dev/sdb6 /newhome ext3 nouser,noauto,atime,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sdb3 /media/newhome ext3 nouser,noauto,atime,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0

And here mtab:

grisell: ~> more /etc/mtab
/dev/sda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
lrm /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/volatile tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda1 /media/hda1 ext3 rw,loop=/dev/loop0 0 0
/dev/sda6 /home ext3 rw 0 0
/dev/sdb3 /media/newhome ext3 rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0

If I now try to unmount and mount again, next mounting fails:

root@grisell:/home# mount -v /media/newhome/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb3,
    missing codepage or other error
    In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
    dmesg | tail or so

I am totally confused, any help will be great. Thanks so much in advance ! I'll try a reboot just for the kicks of it ...

[penguin.ch]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

Input/Output error

Oh, oh anyhow, let us try to track down the culprit by eliminating the usual suspects:

- Make sure that /dev/sdb3 is not mounted (reboot if in doubt)
- From /etc/fstab, comment out the entry referring to /dev/sdb3
- Make sure the file system is clean: sudo fsck.ext3 -fv /dev/sdb3
- Set up a new mountpoint: sudo mkdir /data && sudo chmod 777 /data
- Manually mount the partition: sudo mount -t ext3 -o defaults /dev/sdb3 /data

... and hope for the best ... If this attempt fails, change the options from defaults to rw,users (but please, for now, stay away from setting as much options as possible ...).

However, what I tend to worry about is that not the mounting but the transfer of (large) files is what causes trouble to your system. But this is mereley a misgiving (hopefully unfounded).

Birdy

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

Input/Output error

Oh, oh anyhow, let us try to track down the culprit by eliminating the usual suspects:

- Make sure that /dev/sdb3 is not mounted (reboot if in doubt)
- From /etc/fstab, comment out the entry referring to /dev/sdb3


- Make sure the file system is clean: sudo fsck.ext3 -fv /dev/sdb3
- Set up a new mountpoint: sudo mkdir /data && sudo chmod 777 /data
- Manually mount the partition: sudo mount -t ext3 -o defaults /dev/sdb3 /data

... and hope for the best ... If this attempt fails, change the options from defaults to rw,users (but please, for now, stay away from setting as much options as possible ...).

However, what I tend to worry about is that not the mounting but the transfer of (large) files is what causes trouble to your system. But this is mereley a misgiving (hopefully unfounded).

Birdy

Thanks a lot again, Birdy!

I actually tried a fsck yesterday, before reading your post. It came out saying that the filesystem was not clean, so I re-ran with the -p option. At somepoint it found some "inconsistency" and gave up. Am I better off just reformating the partition, and _then_ running fsck ? I don't mind, I still don't have anything valuable there. For the record, /dev/sdb1 is also ext3, and it _was_ clean.

But I also think there is something fishy going on while copying files. And as you noted, the failures was on a large iso file. There is the possibility that, even though I reverted the SATA II disk to SATA (it wasn't even recognized by the BIOS otherwise), the disk is not entirely compatible with the SATA Controller. I'll Google for it.

One more thing, this is a fairly new model, is it possible that a newer kernel (with newer drivers overall) would help?

Cheers !

[penguin.ch]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

Am I better off just reformating the partition, and _then_ running fsck?

As a "rule of thumb", fsck should be able to repair the file system (which is know for being robust) - although you may have to apply some force: sudo fsck.ext3 -p /dev/sdb3 (further reading).

And as you noted, the failures was on a large ISO file.

If this specific failure were repeatable, I would suggest checking the ISO file's integrity, for example by trying to mount and access it as a so-called loop device:

sudo mkdir /media/image
sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop [somewhere]/[somefile].iso /media/image
sudo cd /media/image; ls -l

If this fails, I would suspect the ISO file for being merely crap ...

is it possible that a newer kernel (with newer drivers overall) would help

Academic answer: it depends ... you may give Knoppix, an up-to-date live system with excellent hardware recognition a try - just to check things out (without touching your installed system).

HTH
Birdy

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA


Ok, my disk is fscked

I did several tests with fsck, and many (thousands) of blocks are giving me non-recoverable error messages of this kind:

Error reading block 13137026 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 6554248. Ignore error<y>? yes

Force rewrite<y>? yes

I googled for the error, it seems like it is hardware failure. This is a brand new (and a bit expensive) drive. I'll return it and get a new one (unless I find something else in the very limited time I have for testing). When I left home it was still running, after many, many hours (overnight).

Thank you so much for all your help Birdy, it's been great, really ! I'll keep ou (and anyone reading this) posted.

Cheers!
Leo

[penguin.ch]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

At least for the sake of completeness, after having finished checking, you could also try to reformat the whole disk (by means of GParted, not a sledgehammer - just to avoid potential misunderstandings ...).

Birdy

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

At least for the sake of completeness, after having finished checking, you could also try to reformat the whole disk.

Birdy

I did reformat the partition before the fsck, do you think it makes sense to restart the disk ? (new parition table, new disk label, etc). I'll give it a shot if I have time (I also have to hurry to get the returned processed in time), thanks again!

[lmilano]

Re: problem mounting second SATA

Another update. I tried many things, including running the latest kernel (2.6.20-5-generic). I keep seeing the same errors. This may be related to this bug:

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7516

Or it could be a hardware problem, I'll return this and get an IDE disk. All I need is more deisk space at this point. I'm still on an aging 32 bit machine. Whenever 64 bit becomes popular (enought to get the windows codecs, flash and other binary-nly software ported), I'll switch to AMD 64 dual core, DDR2 and SATA 2. I hope SATA support matures, and it's not only Linux, there are also lots of problems with some controllers not compatible with certain drives, etc. This is ridiculous for a _standard_ such as sata. Oh well, there goes my rant.

BTW, all this trouble is with a WD2500KS. I'd try to stay waway from this disk on Linux right now.

[b0uncyfr0]

Re: problems with WD2500KS SATAII Drive

BTW, all this trouble is with a WD2500KS. I'd try to stay waway from this disk on Linux right now.

I feel somewhat relieved because i had the option of choosing that drive but i chose something else. I have a problem with my hdd. Its already formatted to ext3 and when i fsck'ed it was clean but it wont mount. I dont know what to do now.

[lmilano]

Re: problems with WD2500KS SATAII Drive

I feel somewhat relieved because i had the option of choosing that drive but i chose something else. I have a problem with my hdd. Its already formatted to ext3 and when i fsck'ed it was clean but it wont mount. I dont know what to do now.

Are you still having problems ? If so, you may want to post the details, someone may be able to help!

[b0uncyfr0]

Re: problems with WD2500KS SATAII Drive

Thanks lmilano but i already patched things up with my hdd. But Thanks anyway...