Re: Nvidia SATA - Seagate SATA Drives

[Jim Gifford <maillist@jg555.com>]

Robert Hancock wrote:
> Jim Gifford wrote:
>> Here's the situation. I have a MSI KN8Neo-f motherboard with a 
>> Seagate Barracuda 250 GB SATA drive. I have replaced this drive three 
>> times in the last two weeks due to it failing. Now the only thing in 
>> common is the use of a 2.6.22.9 kernel I built from scratch, before 
>> that I was using 2.6.19 kernel but working on doing some upgrades for 
>> the CLFS project and tried a 2.6.22.9.  I will explain the situation 
>> and including the links I used for fix the issues.
>>
>> It boots up and instantly has a problem detecting so I have to add 
>> irqpoll to my bootup line. {Reference 
>> http://my.opera.com/snowburn/blog/index.dml/tag/failed%20to%20set%20xfermode} 
>> Then I get the adma issue, so I add sata_nv.adma=0 to my bootup 
>> line.{Reference 
>> http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0706.1/1424.html}
>>
>> Now after a few times of booting the drive completely fails. So is 
>> the nv_sata drive the cause?? Based on what I have done yes, and the 
>> reason I can say that is because I took another one of those drives 
>> and the same computer loaded Windows(forgive me for using this 
>> word!!!) on it and it worked perfectly.
>
> You'll have to be more specific about "completely fails".. Also, it 
> would be useful to get the dmesg output from dmesg directly and not 
> from syslog, as the entries posted under the second link you gave were 
> missing some critical information (it seems that syslog can do this in 
> some cases..) In particular the line showing what command failed would 
> be useful.
It never gets into the system at all, just locks up. The hard drive 
starts clicking and eventually doesn't get recognized by BIOS.
>
> Using "irqpoll" is not a very good workaround, it really is just a 
> band-aid to get things working. Often this indicates motherboard IRQ 
> routing issues. You may want to make sure you have the latest BIOS 
> installed for the board.
I'll check for a new BIOS, but believe I have the most current on it.
>
>>
>> One other issue that showed up was the drive does not recognize the 
>> drive when it's in the 3gb transfer mode, I have to jumper it to 
>> 1.5gb mode.
>>
>> Here's a link to the drive model:   
>> http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=a62099f4fa74c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&locale=en-US 
>>
>> Here's a link to my motherboard: 
>> http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo4-F&class=mb
>> It has 2GB of Memory and a Nvidia PCI-E Graphics Adapter
>>
>> I will work with any member of the lkml team to help isolate the 
>> issue, the only issue is that when it locks up everything has to be 
>> written down or photographed.
>