Subject: IDE sector remap (was Re: Random timeouts in 1.0-ALPHA...)
To: Michael L. VanLoon -- Iowa State University <michaelv@iastate.edu>
From: Eric Hvozda - API <hvozda@apache.raynet.com>
List: current-users
Date: 07/21/1994 16:32:10
> >I'm getting random timeouts and lost interrupts whenever disk access gets 
> >heavy.  The error message reads as follows:
> >
> >wdc0: lost interrupt: status 58<seekdone,drq> error 0
> >wd: wdcstart: timeout waiting for drq: status 0 error 0
> >
> >This message just repeats itself over and over until I do a ^C to stop 
> 
> This sounds like you may have a bad spot on your hard drive, and the
> drive is trying to recalibrate or move the spot, while in the mean
> time the wd driver is timing out waiting for the drive.  You can
> verify this by 1) borrowing an IDE drive from a friend who'll let you
> reformat it to put NetBSD on it, and see if that drive works better,
> or 2) get a DOS exhaustive low-level formatter like SpinRite, or the
> one in PC Tools, and let it run all night on your drive.  It will tell
> you if you have bad, or even marginal, spots on your drive.

I had a Maxtor 7345AT do this on occasion after I moved it from a 486
to a 386. It was quite annoying to say the least.  I was under the impression:

1  Maxtor is a `decent` drive far as IDE disks go
2  sector remap is transparent to the software

Given a good/proper IDE implementation, shouldn't #2 be true and you shouldn't
see error messages of the sort above unless you run out of remap space as well?

The 386 I had moved the disk to had the same geometery in BIOS (AMI BIOS
as a matter of fact).  Don't recall if it was an Intel or chip of other
Mgr.  Does it really matter if its a AMD or Cyrix per se?

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