On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 09:51:26AM +0900, sen@eccosys.com wrote:
> > Can you test if the drive itself gets hot ?
> 
> I do happen to periodically pull the hard drives out of these
> machines, but I've never noticed them to be so hot that I can't touch
> them or have trouble holding/handling them.
> 
> Perhaps touching the casing of the hard disk while it's in operation
> is a better test.  This is difficult for a ThinkPad X20 due to the
> design, but it should be doable for the 600E.
> 
> > Also what kind of IDE controller do you have in these machines ?
> 
> The ThinkPad X20's dmesg gives:
> 
> pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: Intel 82371AB IDE controller (PIIX4) (rev. 0x01)
> 
> The ThinkPad 600E's dmesg gives:
> 
> pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: Intel 82371AB IDE controller (PIIX4) (rev. 0x01)
> 
> So, it looks like they may be the same controller.

Yes, and a widely used one.

> 
> > > Should I disable Ultra DMA on any new disks that I use?  If so, is it
> > > enough to recompile a kernel w/ the following sorts of settings?
> > > 
> > >   wd* at pciide? channel ? drive ? flags 0x0fac
> > 
> > flags 0x0f00
> > would be enouth (disable Ultra-DMA, and let the driver find the rigth PIO and
> > DMA modes).
> 
> Thanks!  I did a clean install on to a third hard disk yesterday and
> shortly after installation, replaced the generic laptop kernel on it
> with a custom-compiled one with flags 0x0fac.  So far, there haven't
> been any problems.  
> 
> After reading your message, I compiled and installed another kernel
> using flags 0x0f00.
> 
> BTW, both hard disks that died were IBM DARA-212000 drives.  The new
> drive I'm trying is an IBM DJSA-220.

Well, maybe a problem with one serie of disks. I've seen this already:
all disks in one server dying at the same time. Look for electrical
problems, suspect UPS, etc ... and when the vendor comes to change the disks
it says that all machines sold at this period have got this problem ...

> 
> > > > It's quite possible that windows won't push it that hard.
> > > 
> > > That's possible.  Ah, you mean and that's why the problem may not have
> > > been noticed more widely?
> > 
> > Yes. Really, I don't believe a driver can damage a hard disk.
> 
> You mean even the ones that could get towers of hard disks to move
> across floors? ;-)

Ha maybe, but then it's not my fault :)

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--