Worrisome error messages about the hard drive(BadCRC)

Summary:

Error messages in messages log from dmesg show BadCRC errors.

Worrisome error messages about the hard drive(BadCRC)

Frido 26 Jan 2008 09:05

I broke out my new MBWE from the package,
set it up, enabled ssh and done nothing else since then except trying to back up some files.
As I was making my first Big transfer, suddenly I see Timeout from my nautilus.
I inspect MBWE and see that except for ping the device is unresponsive.
I reboot it by disconnecting from the power and disregard it, hopefully, as a fluke.
It happened 3 more times since then. Then stopped for now.

I've started going over logs and dmesg.
I noticed the following errors, which look partly worrisome.

Jan 25 18:55:49 MyBookWorld user.err kernel: ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/84 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
Jan 25 18:55:49 MyBookWorld user.warn kernel: ata1: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 25 18:55:49 MyBookWorld user.warn kernel: ata1: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
Jan 25 18:55:52 MyBookWorld user.err kernel: ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/84 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
Jan 25 18:55:52 MyBookWorld user.warn kernel: ata1: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }

I'm more worried about the BadCRC one than anything else there to be honest. I haven't found yet any satisfying Google answers as most only showed up about DriveStatusError without BadCRC.

Anyone got a clue what's the meaning of it? I know what a Bad CRC is in general, and it can't be good.

Thanks in advance.

Last edited on 28 Jan 2008 08:10 by Frido Show more

Worrisome error messages about the hard drive(BadCRC): Update

Frido 30 Jan 2008 16:45

No more freezes so far, perhaps it's just some corruption at the start of the partition, which I guess is not so good but at least it's working.
I'm guessing I can't call WD and say "Hey, the sata log on your My Book, which I hacked into, is sending some info about a corrupt HDD, can I get a replacement please?"

I just wish I could run fsck on it. The fsck simply fails crying out: Error allocating block bitmap (4): Memory allocation failed.
Disabled Mionet which gives me about 3Mb of free memory. Not certain if that's the actual problem.
I tried adding a 32MB swapfile but it still gave me the same error.
I'll next try a bigger swapfile, but I'm not certain how much I need for such a large drive.
I have the 1TB version.

Third Update, Success in running FSCK

Frido 30 Jan 2008 18:33

Apparently it is a memory issue, 32MB wasn't enough. I went on the safe side, and since there was plenty of room in the root partition I created a 1GB swapfile.

I ran the scan and it went on about some multiply-claimed blocks and some bitmap differences, I'm about to run a second scan to verify everything looks smooth.

For the curious:

---

I used the following to create a swapfile:

This creates a swap file the size of 1000MB in the root( / )directory(not home directory).
Btw, not my fault if you accidentally zero your whole partition so know what you're doing.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=1000

this makes it into a swap format

mkswap /swapfile

and this way you mount it as a swap

swapon /swapfile

after you are done with the extra memory buff, you can remove it by

swapoff /swapfile

and delete it when you want with

rm /swapfile

Re: Third Update, Success in running FSCK

deepsix2k4 28 Feb 2008 20:50

I've been struggling with the exact same problem for a few days. I googled the fsck error and today yours showed up! I've been on this forum looking for solutions too as this is where I started. Anyway, I read elsewhere that I should try it too so I'm going to try a swapfile also. I assume the issue only occurs when sending large files because that is when I have been running into problems.

I'll post back on my results. Thanks for supplying me with the commands!

Re: Third Update, Success in running FSCK

M3r 06 Dec 2009 15:26

I've got the My Book World Edition White Light. I have got the exact same problems that you are explaining.
How did you run FSCK? I'm new to linux. All the other commands that you wrote worked fine.