I have a brand new hitachi 500GB drive that I carried home very carefully. I have a fresh install of CentOS 5.5 with LVM2 partitions. I get all theses errors. I am curious as to weather this is actually a hard disk problem or just a driver issue?

SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x25
ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:a5:e6:0a/00:02:11:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 262144 in
res 51/40:69:3c:e7:0a/40:01:11:00:00/01 Emask 0x9 (media error)
ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata1.00: error: { UNC }
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata1: EH complete
ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x25
ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:a5:e6:0a/00:02:11:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 262144 in
res 51/40:69:3c:e7:0a/40:01:11:00:00/01 Emask 0x9 (media error)
ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata1.00: error: { UNC }
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata1: EH complete
SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back

The smartctl package should be available for CentOS. This should give you the status of the drive. No joy after that and I would exercise the warranty.

At first I would give it a try with a different data-cable. If that doesn't work, I would download the manufacturers diagnosis-tool and test the drive with it. For Hitachi it is the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. Burn it to a CD and boot from it.

Or you can burn:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
it has that and more tests.

I recommend at least a smartctl long test or badblocks.

If there are errors, return the drive immediately under warranty for a new one.

1 members found this post helpful.

A few years ago I took delivery of a brand new SATA drive and subsequently found that it had been used,there was evidence of a former windoze partition still on it... I would use the UBCD as recommended by H_TeXMeX_H and zero it right out,then run some tests.

I just encountered the same exact error with a Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 (HTS545050A7E380)!

Like you, I purchased it new, about 6 months ago.

Unlike you, I had it working fine for 6 months, until it suddenly exhibited this problem today.

Since those DMA error messages point at a hardware failure, I first didn't know whether it is the hard drive or the motherboard. But thanks to your post, I am now convinced it is a hard drive problem.

Looks like a Hitachi bad series. I now know which HDD brand is not going to replace it...


P.S. Running CentOS 6.4