Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 11:59:35 -0700 From: John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> Cc: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GEOM_PART: Integrity check failed (ada2, MBR) Message-ID: <20140520185935.GS43976@funkthat.com> In-Reply-To: <73415.1400371256@server1.tristatelogic.com> References: <20140517162513.GG43976@funkthat.com> <73415.1400371256@server1.tristatelogic.com>
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Ronald F. Guilmette wrote this message on Sat, May 17, 2014 at 17:00 -0700: > In message <20140517162513.GG43976@funkthat.com>, > John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> wrote: > > >Ronald F. Guilmette wrote this message on Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:38 -0700: > >> > >> In message <20140516130346.GB43976@funkthat.com>, > >> John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> wrote: > >> >Wow, I just noticed this... FreeBSD is only seeing it as a 31MB drive > >> >instead of a 1TB drive... This is probably the problem... > >> > >> OHHHHH! Wow! Yea. That is MESSED UP! > >> ... > > >Can you get a memstick of 11-CURRENT from: > >https://www.freebsd.org/snapshots/ > >and get the output of: > >camcontrol identify ada2 -v > >from a boot of the memstick? mav thinks that it might be an issue w/ > >HPA, and this should help track it down. > > I don't think that there is any need anymore for me to do the above > steps. I am now convinced that I do know what has caused this rather > remarkable (and remarkably annoying) problem. > > I had forgotten all about this, until now, but there is apparently a > known problem where older (pre-2010) Gigabyte motherboards will in > fact create a Host Protected Area (HPA) on the ``first'' ATA drive > in a given system, *and* that in cases where the drive is 1TB or larger, > the result will be a drive that self-identifies as being only 31 (or 32) > megabytes big. (You can google for this known problem and you'll find a > _lot_ of references to it.) > > The specific 1 TB drive on which I experienced this problem had been > working just fine with no problems whatsoever on another system that I > have here. However I made the mistake of trying to put it into my #2 > desktop system, which is based on a vintage 2006 Gigabyte motherboard. > > I now firmly believe that this caused the specific form of corruption > that now afflicts the drive in question. > > I already have sought, and have already been provided with the steps > that I need to undertake in order to "repair" the apparent capacity of > the drive in question, and I am already making plans to replace my > *&^%$#@ Gigabyte motherboard with something different with all due > haste. > > I will *never* purchase another Gigabyte motherboard as long as I live! > (In addition to this extraordinarily problem, it also has had a number > of obscure problems booting various things from USB-attached mass > storage.) > > Anyway, my thanks to all involved for their time and effort considering > my unfortunate plight. Who knew that just connecting an otherwise > flawless hard drive to a specific kind of motherboard would instantly > render it effectively brain dead? Wow, this is sooo BAD... Motherboards should never touch a HD like this w/o consent from the user... Though of course the other thing is that Gigabyte's QA is soo bad that they didn't catch such a basic bug in testing... but this does sound like your issue though, glad you found it... And this is useful info for others too, Thanks. -- John-Mark Gurney Voice: +1 415 225 5579 "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."
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