From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 19 01:32:19 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9EE0F16A4CE for ; Sun, 19 Dec 2004 01:32:19 +0000 (GMT) Received: from chello084114137224.1.15.vie.surfer.at (chello084114137224.1.15.vie.surfer.at [84.114.137.224]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3E69143D2D for ; Sun, 19 Dec 2004 01:32:18 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from 4711@chello.at) Received: (qmail 22796 invoked from network); 19 Dec 2004 01:32:16 -0000 Received: from matrix010.matrix.net (192.168.123.10) by ns.matrix.net with SMTP; 19 Dec 2004 01:32:16 -0000 From: Christian Hiris <4711@chello.at> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 02:31:59 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.7 References: <20041218233156.GA10895@bobball.uchicago.edu> In-Reply-To: <20041218233156.GA10895@bobball.uchicago.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200412190232.15663.4711@chello.at> cc: wbwither@bobball.uchicago.edu Subject: Re: Identical hard drives, different disklabel sectors/cylinders X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 01:32:19 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 19 December 2004 00:31, wbwither@bobball.uchicago.edu wrote: > Hi all, > > I've got a problem question about my hard drives. I've installed > two brand-new Western Digital 250GB drives on the same channel of > a Maxtor-branded PCI/IDE controller (Promise chipset). I've tried > different channels, different cables, and using the motherboard's > IDE controller -- same thing every time. Here's from > /var/log/messages: > > Dec 18 15:59:23 /kernel: ad4: 238475MB > [484521/16/63] at ata2-master UDMA100 Dec 18 15:59:23 /kernel: ad5: > 238475MB [484521/16/63] at ata2-slave UDMA100 > > So you can see it's identifying them the same at startup. Now: > > su-2.05b# disklabel ad4 > # /dev/ad4c: > bytes/sector: 512 > sectors/track: 63 > tracks/cylinder: 255 > sectors/cylinder: 16065 > cylinders: 30400 > sectors/unit: 488392002 [...] > su-2.05b# disklabel ad5 > # /dev/ad5c: > bytes/sector: 512 > sectors/track: 63 > tracks/cylinder: 16 > sectors/cylinder: 1008 > cylinders: 484520 > sectors/unit: 488397105 [...] > So you can see, the "sectors/cylinder", "cylinders", and "sectors/unit" > are all different, and this results in slightly different final sizes. > I've set up vinum to create a mirror using the smaller of the two sizes, > and it seems to be working fine, but I'm still worried about the > implications of this. Could this mean that one of my hard drives is > failing? (Again, they're both brand new.) I tried "disklabel -R"'ing each > drive to look like the other one (booting in single-user mode), but it > wouldn't let me. So I'm smack out of ideas. I'd appreciate any info or > suggestions. Your disks slice tables holding different values for C/H/S geometry. You can wipe out the slice tables with the dd(1) command and re-initialize them with fdisk and bsdlabel or sysinstall. There is an example written on this in 'man 8 bsdlabel'. It seems that your BIOS identifies geometry of both disks listed in your dmesg output - C/H/S 484521/16/63. This values also shown in your bsdlabel output of ad5. If you want to re-fdisk and re-bsdlabel ad4 it's necessary that the disk isn't mounted and that it isn't locked by vinum (see also 'man 4 vinum', chapters RUNNING VINUM and AUTOMATIC STARTUP). IMHO there is only one thing that can go wrong with your configuration: If you are booting your system from the mirror, I would test if both of your drives are bootable. - -- Christian Hiris <4711@chello.at> | OpenPGP KeyID 0x3BCA53BE OpenPGP-Key at hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net and http://pgp.mit.edu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFBxNof09WjGjvKU74RAtgWAJ98M9KSoTPsHJU3Ba+JTHrNN2QdmwCfTmwy bFFRyDuNRfAwc3f1R/6PbeI= =j26F -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----