On Thu, 13 May 1999, John Fulmer wrote:

> It would help a little if you would post the errors. 

All the errors appear like the one below. There are 81 entries over the week
(1 on 09-May, 2 on 12-May, the rest today -- 13-May) with around 50 unique
"info" numbers (are these the bad sectors?). The power outages occurred on
May 7.

May  9 03:20:31 clover /netbsd: sd0(sbc0:0:0): medium error, info = 955338
(decimal), data = 07 16 00 68 11 00 00 00 00 00

> Here's what I know.
> 
> Under BSD (and most of what I know is actually BSDI), SCSI 'medium' errors
> can be either the disk, the SCSI cable, or the controller.
> 
> If it's the disk, it means that you have run out of remappable sectors,
> and it can't remap no more. A low level format MIGHT take care of it. If
> it's an older drive, the power outage may have let your drive heads scrape
> the platters, but I would have to be at least 5-7 years old for that.
> Again, a low level format would take care of that. Of course, it would
> erase the disk as well.

It's a 700MB Quantum drive which came with a PowerMac 7100/80. Since that
machine was available from 1/95 to 1/96, I'd estimate it as approx 4 years
old.

> If it's the cable, it's an easy fix. I wouldn't bet on it though.
> 
> If it's the controller, you may be SOL. The last time I ran into this, it
> was the controller.

Hmmm. We do have some other IIci's lying around; I may be able to borrow one
for a little bit to see if the errors are still showing up there...

-- 
Dave Schmitt <dschmi1@umbc.edu>