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Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:44:33 +0100
From: Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com>
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To: Christian Walther <cptsalek@gmail.com>
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Cc: FreeBSD Users Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: ad0: TIMEOUT - Is my disk dying?
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Christian Walther wrote:

>>
>> > > I'm seeing a lot of the following messages lately:
>> > >
>> > > Mar 29 21:02:01 pixie kernel: ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1
>> > > retry left) LBA=13554983
>> > > Mar 29 21:02:34 pixie kernel: ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1
>> > > retry left) LBA=35376691
>>

Just thought I should point out that you can get errors like this if 
your disk drive *cable* is faulty or has wiggled loose.

I spent hours testing a 250Gb drive with manufacturer tools only to 
solve the problem by replacing the SATA cable.  I suspect the cable was 
fine and had just wiggled loose.  SATA may be thinner, but they're still 
a bugger to route because they pull out so easily.  Even an IDE cable 
could have gone faulty or wiggled out; but in 15 years that's never 
happened to me whereas I've seen 2 SATA cables wiggle out in an 
untouched tower case in two years.

--Alex