Undetected disk errors on 2nd drive in 386/ix 2.0.2

Larry Campbell campbell at redsox.bsw.com
Fri Dec 15 10:13:02 AEST 1989


I've just added a new ESDI controller second drive to my 386/ix 2.0.2
system.  The controller is a WD1007-SE2;  the second drive is an Imprimis
180-or-so-MB 3 1/2" drive.  I reformatted both drives using the controller
BIOS, ran sysadm addharddisk to configure things, and everything seemed
to be ok.

Except now scary stuff is happening.  Occasionally -- once, twice, maybe
three times a day -- a file on the new drive gets corrupted.  The file
length is OK but some or all blocks in the file are either missing (holes
in file) or random other blocks.  (If I had to make a guess, I'd say that
some disk writes are just not happening at all, or are going to the wrong
block on the disk.  Might alternate sector mapping be broken?)

I have taken to running fsck on the drive at least once a day;  it usually
finds two or three lost files and one or two files with unwanted holes.

The console is not logging ANY disk errors.  It is, however, occasionally
logging:

	s5inode: inode already allocated

I've seen this message perhaps four or five times since the 2nd drive
was installed.  Far more than four or five files have been corrupted,
though.  No disk read or write errors have been reported.  The problem
affects only the second drive -- the first drive is fine.

Now, earlier I tried installing the second drive with a WD1007A-WA2
controller.  This didn't work at all -- the controller would hang very
quickly.  Several people pointed out (thanks again, folks!) that the WD1007A
has a design defect that prevents it from operating two drives, and that the
WD1007V would solve the problem.  Well, the new controller does work a lot
better than the old one, but this kind of error really scares me.  We really
can't tolerate this level of unreliability.

Does anyone out there have any clues?  How can so many errors which appear
to be disk errors be going unreported?  Do I just have to give up entirely
on running two drives with Western Digital controllers and 386/ix?  Help!
-- 
Larry Campbell                          The Boston Software Works, Inc.
campbell at bsw.com                        120 Fulton Street
wjh12!redsox!campbell                   Boston, MA 02109



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