# [solved] wrong disc booting/aborts by itself

## nordic bro

I have sda and sdb set up about 3 years ago.  sda's mbr is where I've (long ago) installed grub.  sdb's mbr is from an xp install (xp is in the first primary partition of sdb then linux ext3 for most of the extended partitions).

this setup has run fine for ages, I use sda grub entry or bios f11 to select booting sdb when I want to play win games.

in the past week or two, usually when I cold boot, before I reach the grub screen, bios (I guess) seems to be selecting sdb to boot so xp begins to boot then a moment later like mboard/bios essentially goes "oops", xp disappears and the sda grub menu comes up as it should.

does anyone know what might be happening?  unless there's a way for sda mbr to say "boot sdb instead", I'm not sure it has anything to do with sda/grub.  or could mboard/bios think sda isn't there?  would that indicate some kind of power issue where sda isn't actually 'online' (or whatever) when boot starts?

both discs are seagate barracuda, psu is quality (silverstone 550W iirc), not really sure what else to include.  I haven't had the computer case open for at least 2 - 3 months, long before this ever started.

incidentally both 'smartctl -H' and seagate's seatools say nothing's wrong w/either disc although I didn't do any of the long tests/scans.

thanks.

also I hesitate to include this because it makes my post much longer and may be misleading wrt above prob but another disc-related thing is that I've been getting these off and on the past couple/few weeks after a short period of moderate/heavy disc usage.  my computer otherwise runs fine throughout the day:

```
klogd: ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x10000 action 0xe frozen

klogd: ata1: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed

klogd: ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg }

klogd: ata1: hard resetting link

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

klogd: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133

klogd: ata1: EH complete

klogd: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x10000 action 0xe frozen

klogd: ata1.00: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed

klogd: ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg }

klogd: ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED

klogd: ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:50:da:b1/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in

klogd:          res 40/00:00:50:da:b1/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)

klogd: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }

klogd: ata1: hard resetting link

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

klogd: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133

klogd: ata1: EH complete
```

I'm using 2.6.38 (gentoo sources) but saw the same with both zen 2.6.38 and ck-sources 2.6.39.  as I say both discs seem to check out ok and I find tons of ppl having variants of the above issue googling going back to 2005 and whatnot.  I haven't studied it in depth but it seems no one really knows what causes it and there are a variety of supposed fixes that never work for everyone.  some say it's the disc/psu, others say cabling, others say libata, ncq, kernel rev, etc., etc.Last edited by nordic bro on Fri Jul 01, 2011 12:59 am; edited 1 time in total

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## SLBMEH

It sounds like your controller may be failing.  If you are lucky enough to have an mb with a second controller... or if you have access to another controller... can you try that and see if you still have the same problem? If you do then it may come down to cables or power... Also it may just be the first port on your controller acting up... if you can shift them back 1 or 2 slots and try that way...

It sounds pretty quirky in general because normally if your drive is disconnected or powered down when you start up it will boot the first avail and it won't decide to change it's mind once it finds a device with the boot signature (0xAA55) 510 bytes in and has passed off the instructions...

In any case... you can boot a drive from grub... and you can load grub from ntldr...

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## nordic bro

thanks for the help.  since my grub.conf which has a couple linux entries and an xp entry is on sda, it occurs to me it might be grub (or corruption) doing this, not mb/bios.  it hasn't happened enough yet for me to study it and I haven't watched it closely when it does happen but it seems more sensible it would be grub aborting the xp start rather than mb/bios.  atm though I patched grub a year or two ago w/some "quiet" ubuntu patch I found so will have to undo that and see if any grub-type msgs flash before xp starts and I'll know for sure.

I checked my mb pdf and it says I have two controllers except in bios the only way to enable both is to switch sata#1 to ide.  when sata#1 is "sata" then sata#2 disappears.  aren't sure what it would mean to use ide  :Smile:  but at least I have a couple ideas so thanks again.

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## SLBMEH

If you switch the disks around does the opposite scenario occur.  If you swap the disks around and modify the boot order does it still occur?

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## nordic bro

turns out both probs (sdb booting, ata1 resetting) were physical in nature, loose cable or bad sata port.  I didn't test anything, just moved each drive back one port and haven't had either issue once in many days, where both had been occurring frequently.

I noticed at one point in bios setup it repeatedly said it didn't detect anything on port0 (sda) which is why it was booting sdb instead.  however it doesn't seem to me this explains why once it started xp it then aborted and rebooted the machine, only to repeat the same thing over and over.

anyway if I get some time I may try to see whether it was the port or the cable by reusing the port (box is in a confined area so not easy getting it disconnected/opened).

thanks for the help!

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