Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 19:34:55 +0200 From: Cliff Sarginson <cls@raggedclown.net> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [OT] how to isolate hardware failure with ATA Message-ID: <20021012173455.GA15981@raggedclown.net> In-Reply-To: <3DA84DE2.9000104@potentialtech.com> References: <3DA84DE2.9000104@potentialtech.com>
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On Sat, Oct 12, 2002 at 12:29:22PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> I think the computer that I'm currently working on has
> hardware that is about to fail. But I'm not sure if it's
> the mobo or the HDD. In the past week, this scenerio has
> happened twice.
> The system just freezes. Not completely, mind you, but
> anything that needs to use the HDD doesn't work. (it's
> weird, you can still type in an Xterm, but it can't
> execute the commands because it can't get the binaries
> off the HDD)
> One time that it did this, I hard booted and and the BOIS
> claimed that there was no HDD, so I poped the cover to check
> for loose cables, found none, and (figuring I was hosed with
> a bad HDD) it booted up OK this time. The other time, the
> hard boot resulted in a successful reboot.
> Prior to this week, this computer has been 100% reliable for
> about 2 years now.
>
> So, I'm assuming the problem is one of two things: HDD or
> ATA controller on the mobo. Does anyone have any advice on
> how to isolate the cause of the problem? I'm on a budget
> and I'd really like to replace _only_ the part that's failing,
> but I'm not sure how to isolate the problem, and I don't have
> any spare hardware to swap out.
First thing I would do having checked the obvious as you have done is to
go to the web-site of the manafacturer and find their donload area. They
almost all have diagnostic programs for their hard drives which you
can download for free. See if that turns up anything, run the tests
repeatedly for a while. The test program you ususally use by putting it
on a floppy and booting from it, quite often it boots into a minimalist
DOS, or straight into the diagnostic.
See what happens with that.
--
Regards
Cliff Sarginson
The Netherlands
Email: cls@raggedclown.net
Tel : +31 (0)10 4764595
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