DMA errors, crash?

James Wilkinson ubuntu at westexe.demon.co.uk
Wed May 4 12:44:44 UTC 2005


Chuk Goodin wrote:
> I have suddenly been getting a lot of DMA errors, including some that
> say things like DriveReady SeekComplete. These errors bring the
> machine to a complete halt. Also, a couple of times when I tried to
> boot from CD (CDs that had previously been bootable and which I also
> later booted from successfully), I had no luck.
> 
> Is my (nearly new Maxtor) HD dying? Is there some setting that could
> fix this? I'm running Hoary on an ABIT BH-6 mobo if that matters.

Some fairly obvious points:

Take a closer look at those DriveReady SeekComplete error messages: they
should have "hda" or "hdc" (or whatever) at the start of the line. Make
sure that refers to your hard drive, not your CD drive!

On a CD drive, this could just mean the drive is having difficulty
reading the media.

Is the CD on the same cable as the hard drive?

It could potentially be a problem with your IDE adapter. (Are you using
the built-in BX adapter?) There's a slight chance that you might lose
the errors if you put it on a different cable in the other IDE port.
(And a slightly larger chance if you used a completely different IDE
adapter: are you using a motherboard this old because you don't need the
performance or you can't afford a complete upgrade?)

And download and run the Maxtor diagnostics from
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm
There's a bootable CD image if you don't have Windows.

Hope this helps,

James.
-- 
E-mail address: james | Beneath this stone lies Murphy,
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | They buried him today,
                      | He lived the life of Riley,
                      | While Riley was away.




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