SATA drive keeps hard resetting

Hi all,

I have a SATA drive in a motherboard with an ATI SB600 chipset that until now worked just fine.
The disk seems fine but after a while it start making noises (like spinning up) and the computer freezes during 2 or 3 seconds. I think my SATA drive is broken, or maybe the motherboard. This is what dmesg says:

[  229.096000] ata4: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x90200 action 0x6 frozen
[  229.096000] ata4: (irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed)
[  229.096000] ata4: hard resetting port
[  233.400000] ata4: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[  233.404000] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  233.404000] ata4: EH complete
[  233.404000] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] 160836480 512-byte hardware sectors (82348 MB)
[  233.404000] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[  233.404000] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[  233.404000] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

This happens randomly, maybe after a few seconds, maybe after an hour. Sometimes if the coimputer case receives a little bump or it is moved the problem appears inmediatly. What's the kernel complaining about? Something is broken isn't it? I hope it's the cable...

I'm using Ubuntu 7.10 with kernel 2.6.22-14-generic in a dual processor computer. Below there's some hardware information. The output of dmesg is attached. Thanks!

Matías.

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lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 10)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI-X Root Port
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 13)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1)
02:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)

--------------------------------------------

lshw:

*-pci:0
description: Host bridge
product: RS480 Host Bridge
vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
physical id: 100
bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
version: 10
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz

*-storage
description: SATA controller
product: SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
physical id: 12
bus info: pci@0000:00:12.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: storage ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=ahci latency=64 module=ahci

--------------------------------------------

See http://marc.info/?l=linux-ide&m=119707355016060&w=2
...

That patch will not apply cleanly to 2.6.22 - it will show rejects in libata-core.c. Those are OK - it's a cleanup of wrongly blacklisted drives. The main part - in ahci.c - is the one that's needed.

By the way, which drive it is? If it's Seagate, pull out its only jumper (factory preset) which limits it to SATAI.

/mjt

Thanks for your reply. It's a Hitachi HDS728080PLA380 80GB SATA drive. It's kind of old so it may show the bug you mention. I'll compile the kernel with that patch and tell you how it worked.

Matías

Matias's problem doesn't have anything to do with spurious completion. PHY RDY changed and HSM violation are completely different error conditions.

I think either the harddrive or power supply is dying. smartctl -a might show something but I'm not too hopeful. The surest way is to connect the drive to a different PSU and see whether the problem goes away but if all other drives on the system is fine, I would just throw away the harddrive.

Thanks.

tejun

I tried the drive in anotcher PC and it didn't work. I'll see how far I can throw it away! Thanks!