# Maxtor and the status=0x59

## Pythagoras1

Hi all!

I saw a strange behaviour of my Kernel.

Gentoo is a fresh install on my machine and the Kernel hates it if I turn off the PC (it doesn't matter if I umount root - also after halt and manual power off). It seems that my root partition becomes always damaged when loosing power or if I press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot W2k at the begin of it's booting. (strangest!!!)

```

{cannot see above this}

hda: read_intr: status=0x59 {DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error}

hda: read_intr: error=0x10 {SectorIDNotFound}, LBAsect=67794364, sector=64

ide0: reset: success

{now the top 2 lines repeat 4 times, followed by the 3rd line again}

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 64

isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=03:03, iso_blknum=16, block=32

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03 
```

this output is copied from releated topic https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=13941

at me. This is the kernel output if I did such a mistake before:

```

{cannot see above this}

hda: read_intr: status=0x59 {DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error}

hda: read_intr: error=0x10 {SectorIDNotFound}, LBAsect=119931901, sector=49020928

ide0: reset: success

{now the top 2 lines repeat 4 times, followed by the 3rd line again}

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:07 (hda), sector 49020928

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03 
```

the only way was simply to boot the gentoo-installation pc and then my own kernel worked too without any errors. Probably my kernel does not make an integrity check of the partition and the cd does.

I have a Maxtor HD and I saw in few topics that this HD pruduces these errors if a Size-Limitation-Jumper (or so) is installed - if this is my case, it would be great if someone could tell me where I can find this jumper.

My opinion is that my kernel needs an additional option to integrity check my disks - if this is so, it would also be great if someone could tell me which option this is too.

FYI this error doesn't occur if I simply reboot Linux with Ctrl-Alt-Del.

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## Pythagoras1

hmmm.... the only jumper on my hard disc is the 'master piece'  :Smile: )

i'll try to contact dell

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## Pythagoras1

Unfortunately dell support couldn't solve my problem.  :Sad: 

I got the hint to press Ctrl-Alt-D when booting so Dell-Bios performes a check of my drives. My HD 'passed' that check and seemed to work correctly but the error only occurs when switching power off (or the Ctrl-Alt-Del while W2k-boot).

I can remember: I used SuSE for a year, weeks before and my kernel showed me sometimes a message, that the device was NOT cleanly umounted while booting. The SuSE kernel also performed that integrity check which mine does not.

I beleive this is a firmware bug or the HD has a mechanical problem with switching power off - probably there is a cache which didn't write everything at the end.

A workaround that I would accept  :Smile:  is the FS check before the kernel mounts the partition but unfortunately I couldn't find this option. (which seems to be enabled in SuSE and Gentoo-install cd)

PS I mistyped the boot message above. The last line of my output was:

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:07

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## DrBile

Wondering if you had any resolution on this....  I am getting similar issues  (on install, however) on a 10GB Maxtor drive on a Optiplex G150.  I checked jumpers, ran the Dell utility, and played with the kernel configuration (and even completely restarted the installation process, just in case), but still am unable to mount the root filesystem.   

Could you outline exactly how you are bringing up your machine with the installation CD?  I tried using lilo instead of grub, which would seem to eliminate the bootloader as the problem.  (Since the kernel was booting, one would expect that the bootloader was not to blame, in any case)

It must be something between the kernel and the drive (DMA issues?)  I am not an expert in such things.

Thanks,

Brent

"Regime change starts at home"

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## blubber

I just installed a fresh copy of gentoo on a new mainboard, and now my maxtor 30gb is giving the same errors. PowerMax, maxtors diag tool reports no errors... Is there someone who knows how to solve this iritating problem?

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## procrustes

Now I'm having the same problem, on a brand new IBM T40 Thinkpad, with essentially the same error message.  This is a standard install, and I've tried booting with vanilla and gentoo sources for the kernel.  The LiveCD 1.4_rc4 works just fine, no problems, and reiserfsck (I'm using reiserfs) reports no errors.  Has anyone else had/fixed this problem, especially with a laptop?

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## procrustes

Well, I found my problem.  Maybe this will help someone else.  It's a really stupid mistake.  In my partition table, my / partition was listed as Linux swap and my swap partition was listed as Linux.  Switched those, and things worked perfectly.  Now to get everything else working...

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## Pythagoras1

I don't think that I made a related mistake, but if it helps out, here's my partition table: 

```
Platte /dev/hda: 61.4 GByte, 61492838400 Byte

255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 7476 Zylinder

Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 * 512 = 8225280 Bytes

     Gerät boot.  Anfang      Ende    Blöcke   Id  Dateisystemtyp

/dev/hda1   *         1      3060  24579418+   7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda2          3061      4335  10241437+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

/dev/hda3          4336      7476  25230082+   5  Erweiterte

/dev/hda5          4336      4348    104391   83  Linux

/dev/hda6          4349      4414    530113+  82  Linux Swap

/dev/hda7          4415      7476  24595483+  83  Linux
```

"Erweiterte" means extended.

1 is W2k root partition (ntfs)

2 is a shared space for R/W from both OS (fat32)

3 contains 5, 6 and 7

5 is boot (ext3)

6 is swap

7 is root (reiser3)

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## procrustes

One final update:

As noted above, my problem disappeared after repartitioning the hard drive.  What I did not mention was that I also reduced the size of the linux partition.  This evidently just removed the bad sectors from circulating.

Several months later (yesterday), I started getting the same errors suddenly (with no changes to my system).  About an hour or two after that, my hard drive was completely unreadable or writable.  Reading the partition table, which the kernel does every time you boot, generated those errors and a kernel panic.  Sigh.

Almost every thread on these forums which mentions problems like this ended up concluding a hardware problem.  It seems they were right.  Now that I have a new hard drive everything works perfectly and I have full use of my disk space.

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## blamothe

i was having the same problem on a new ibm laptop, and after running every hardrive test imaginable, i was pretty sure it wasn't the drive.  what you want to enable is auto geometry resizing under ide 2 disk support in ata/ide/.... support in the kernel config.  the problem for me, i didn't think ibm would still use an award bios with a 40 gig drive, but i guess they do.  hope this helps others out there.

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## Pythagoras1

 *blamothe wrote:*   

> i was having the same problem on a new ibm laptop, and after running every hardrive test imaginable, i was pretty sure it wasn't the drive.  what you want to enable is auto geometry resizing under ide 2 disk support in ata/ide/.... support in the kernel config.  the problem for me, i didn't think ibm would still use an award bios with a 40 gig drive, but i guess they do.  hope this helps others out there.

 

Yeah, you're right! My desktop is a Dell Dimension 8100 shipped with a Phoenix BIOS (so  there's no Award one). The documentation about the auto geometry resizing said something about Maxtor disks althought it described not my problem.

Thank you a lot, it finally solved this problem  :Cool: 

bye,

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## kuemmel

blamothe: thank you so much. after digging through the forum i was getting nervous about my disc. your hint saved me A LOT of time. thank you very much.

is there a way to get this hint more public ? I think a lot of people in this forum suffer "SectorIdNotFound"-problems

greetings Joachim

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