# Hard Disk problem

## zhushazang

One opnion.

Is this a problem in HD or in the connection between HD and motherboard of a laptop?

ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen

ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT

ata1.00: cmd 25/00:20:84:41:f9/00:00:18:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 16384 in

         res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)

ata1.00: status: { DRDY }

ata1.00: hard resetting link

ata1.01: hard resetting link

ata1.01: failed to resume link (SControl 0)

ata1.00: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata1.01: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)

ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133

ata1.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0

ata1: EH complete

ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133

ata1: EH complete

Any help are welcome.

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## NeddySeagoon

zhushazang,

It can be either a dying drive or an interface issue.

The first step is to make sure you have current backups. The drive may never spin up again.

Next, remove the drive, then replace it so that the electrical connector contacts are wiped.  

If the problem persists, get smartmontools and see what the drives internal error log says.

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## Jurge Austin

Hello,

Sometimes there are errors which can be found in the hard disk and which can hinder the applications to write temporary files into it. In order to solve it, we should make sure that there are not excessive temporary files . So it is better for us to remove them at first. 

Thanks

Jurge Austin

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## LordVan

another thing is to install smartmontools (it is in portage but here's a link to the page http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki )

and check hdd health / run some tests

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## the8lack8ox

This may be totally irrelevant, but I think I had the exact same error crop up on me awhile back.  I was using Fedora 16 at the time, but after switching to Gentoo ~amd64, the messages disappeared and my drive runs perfectly.  No idea why.

I have seen that error posted in forums around the net before, particularly when I was researching the problem myself.  Most people seem to assume it is the sign of a disk failure.  Personally, I have no idea.  I wouldn't assume right off the bat that you've got a bad disk or disk controller, but I can't really offer any help other than that.

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