David's Computer Stuff Journal: My laptop's HD appears to have died

My laptop's HD appears to have died

David N. Welton — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:25:00 -0800

So it looks like I will have to use the other computer, and hope that Dell sorts things out quickly. I'm pretty disappointed, as I just purchased the machine (an Inspiron 1505 with Ubuntu) in July, and haven't really traveled with it much.

[440525.460000] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
[440525.460000] ata2: EH complete
[440942.908000] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
[440942.908000] ata2.00: cmd a0/01:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 cdb 0x43 data 12 in
[440942.908000]          res 50/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x2 (HSM violation)
[440942.908000] ata2: soft resetting port

It required fsck'ing, and that was pretty much all she wrote.

The disk itself, according to smartctl:

Device: ATA      ST980813AS       Version: 3.AD
Serial number:             5NH0301G

It doesn't support SMART though, so I don't know if the recent fuss about Ubuntu and Laptop HD's has anything to do with it. I never ran it much without power in any case, so I doubt it.

It's especially frustrating, because I was making good progress on the Android port for Hecl, and will in the best of cases have to get a new computer "broken in", even though I do have good backups.

My fingers are crossed that the money I spent for extra coverage will be worth something and that Dell Austria will be able to resolve the problem in a hurry, without requiring that I send the machine to the US or anything else that takes a lot of time.

Sigh:-(

"My laptop's HD appears to have died" by David Welton

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 01:46:59 -0800

Looks like Dell will replace it tomorrow, which is pretty fast and should be hassle free... I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

"My laptop's HD appears to have died" by David Welton

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 01:15:18 -0800

Thanks for the links, Manuel. Now I'm slightly confused, because the disk certainly crapped out in a major way - lost its ext3 journal, and stashed everything in /lost+found. It seems odd that other people are reporting a similar problem as 'spurious messages'.

"My laptop's HD appears to have died" by 1052

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:05:52 -0800

I have the same error but my HD is still alive. At least for now... There are bug reports about it here:

http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.bugs.dist/browse_thread/thread/9c4580151e852a2f

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-ide@vger.kernel.org/msg11570.html

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/137470

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/163637

Cheers,

Manuel.