Re: SSD errors

[Robert Nestor <rnestor%mac.com@localhost>]

Preliminary test results based on your suggestions look very promising.  The latest BIOS for this HP machine is 2.28A, but during refurb version J2.31 was installed.  No clue what the differences are though.

And as Penny might say, I swapped the high tech-techy looking SATA cable for a low tech-techy looking one (actually one of the original HP cables) and ran a pkgsrc update and build on the disk.  This usually generates some of the errors, but this time not a one was seen.  Guess time will tell if it was just a poor SATA cable or a poorly seating cable.

Anyway, thanks for the great suggestions!
-bob

On Mar 3, 2021, at 8:53 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:

> 
> Robert Nestor <rnestor%mac.com@localhost> writes:
> 
>> Feb 26 09:50:59 amd64k /netbsd: [   3.3392559] wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133), WRITE DMA FUA, NCQ (32 tags)
>> Feb 26 09:50:59 amd64k /netbsd: [   3.3392559] wd0(ahcisata0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133) (using DMA), NCQ (31 tags)
> 
> I am not aware of any general problems with NetBSD and SSDs.  Lots of
> people use them and I don't hear about trouble (other than that SSDs
> work great until they fail so you better have backups, just like any
> other disk).
> 
> I have a netbsd-9 system with a 2T SSD.   My dmesg looks like:
> 
>  wd0 at atabus2 drive 0
>  wd0: <SanDisk SDSSDH32000G>
>  wd0: drive supports 1-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
>  wd0: 1863 GB, 3876021 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 3907029168 sectors
>  wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133), NCQ (32 tags)
>  wd0(ahcisata0:2:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133) (using DMA), NCQ (31 tags)
> 
> which is just about the same.  It works with zero problems.
> 
> My guess is that either your SATA controller is not happily working with
> NetBSD, or you have a bad cable or marginal power.  I would check BIOS
> settings and see if your BIOS is up to date.
> 
> I would also run smartctl, but my experience is that device timeout is a
> SATA bus/controller issue and that bad disks get uncorrectable media
> errors instead.