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Date:      Thu, 8 Mar 2001 05:13:46 -0600
From:      "Josh Paetzel" <jpaetzel@hutchtel.net>
To:        <lmayhew@freespace.net>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Hard drive wierdness
Message-ID:  <006601c0a7c0$eaba2100$6100000a@vladsempire.net>
References:  <200103061759.MAA02918@eagle.freespace.net>

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----- Original Message -----
From: <lmayhew@freespace.net>
To: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 11:59 AM
Subject: Hard drive wierdness


> I'm hoping someone can give us some help on an unusual problem.
>
> Our main server has been running freebsd 3.4 stable for about a year
without
> incident.  The problem may have started a few days before Christmas,
in that we
> had a problem with our server which resulted in it crashing every
time I tried
> to read my mail.  We ended up deleting my inbox, and this appeared
to solve the
> problem.  We assumed that I had something corrupt in my mailbox that
was
> causing the problem.
>
> A week later, we started getting seekdone errors, which seemed to
indicate a
> hard drive failure.  We swapped over to a backup drive, were able to
retrieve
> the files from the bad drive with a little work, and replaced the
backup drive
> with a new drive.
>
> About a week later, we once again got the seekdone errors, so we got
a
> completely new set of hard drives.  We did a new build of freebsd3.4
on each
> drive, then copied over mail, websites, and other relevant files.
Five days
> later, once again we got seekdone errors which seemed to indicate a
hard drive
> failure.
>
> Thinking that maybe we had some hardware problem somewhere on the
server, we
> built a whole new machine from scratch.  Completely new machine, and
the old
> machine was taken off line until we could figure out what was
causing the
> problem.
>
> So what happened yesterday?  You guessed it -- hard drive failure in
the middle
> of a mail backup.  After running for 3 weeks straight without a
problem on the
> new machine, we had yet another hard drive failure, with the same
seekdone
> errors showing up.  I swapped the backup drive in and booted from
that, but
> when we try to retrieve anything off the original drive, we get a
"magic
> Number" error, and we are told that every superblock on the drive is
bad.  We
> can't mount the drive to retrieve the last of the info from it.
>
> Incidently, our secondary DNS server has also been running the same
version of
> Freebsd without issue for the last year.  (Watch it develop hard
drive failures
> now just because I have said that)  The other servers in the office
running NT
> and one running an older version of freebsd also don't seem to be
affected.  We
> ran a utility on one of the supposed "failed" drives, and it shows
no faults in
> the drive.
>
>
> So, if you're still reading at this point, my questions are:
>
> Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this?  My sanity won't
take much
> more...
>
> Anyone have any idea how we can retrieve the last of the information
off this
> current drive?  With every superblock supposedly bad we haven't been
able to
> mount the file system to retrieve the info.
>
> Any thoughts or suggestions would be most appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Linda
>
>

When you say that you completely rebuilt the server, did you replace
the case and power suppply?  If you didn't I would bet that you have a
very hungry bad power supply that is snacking on your drives.

Josh


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