Could zero-length partition error on ext4 ext HD be solved by switch to reiserfs?
 

I've a Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB external HD set up w/ SATA for storing mostly video that I've been using for the past 6 months. Lately, when trying to write large amounts of data to it using krusader or rsync the process would freeze and need to be killed. A fsck -f /dev/sdc1 of the file system resulted in: "Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sdc1 Could this be a zero-length partition?" I'm running Kubuntu 9.10 on an AMD64 machine.

Reading from this partition still worked so next I backed up all the data, rebooted, and tried to write again. The error repeated itself several times. I reformatted the HD using gparted, again as ext4. The same error message occurred. I've searched linuxquestions and googled the error, but nothing seems to answer this question:

Upon reformatting this drive as reiserfs it seems to write without errors; a bit slower I suppose due to the larger files sizes, but no more errors.

So my question is, is the aforementioned error message (the zero-length partition) due to a hardware malfunction or a problem with the ext4 format? I don't want to trust the drive with anything too valuable as my videos if the hardware or circuit board on it is going to give out anytime soon. Is it possible that simply by reformatting the HD as reiserfs, the problem solved itself? I'm going to take a wait and see attitude and back up back up back up... but if anyone has any other suggestions / ideas, I'd appreciate the feedback.

Cheers...

#sudo parted

print all

post output

use parted magic or some other cd to fsck all partitions

also mention bios settings

check with smartctl too

Hi Amani:
Here's the output from parted'd print all:
Model: ATA WDC WD10EADS-65L (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 1000GB 1000GB extended
5 64.5kB 199GB 199GB logical ext4
6 199GB 398GB 199GB logical ext4
7 398GB 598GB 199GB logical ext4
8 598GB 797GB 199GB logical ext4
9 797GB 1000GB 203GB logical ext4


Model: ATA OCZ-VERTEX (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 32.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 12.0GB 12.0GB primary ext4 boot
2 12.0GB 32.0GB 20.0GB extended
5 12.0GB 14.0GB 1999MB logical linux-swap(v1)
6 14.0GB 32.0GB 18.0GB logical ext4


Model: ATA WDC WD10EADS-00M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 1000GB 1000GB primary reiserfs


Model: ATA WDC WD15EADS-00P (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 1500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 1500GB 1500GB primary ext4


(parted)


I've written 697 GB to the new reisrfs and the disk has been running continuously without any problems.
That doesn't mean that if there is a problem with the circuit board, or something like that, that it has gone away.
I did a fdsk -f /dev/sdc1 on the reisrfs partition. It took forever, but came out clean as well.
I've just installed smartmontools and will see if that tells me anything as well.

So, so far, so good. But the underlying problem may still exist.

More bad news...
After a crash course on smartctl and some oogles of googles...
Output of
root@david-desktop:/home/david# smartctl -A /dev/sdc
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 111 108 021 Pre-fail Always - 7416
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 90
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 2265
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 58
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 55
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 189 189 000 Old_age Always - 34963
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 119 097 000 Old_age Always - 28
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 2
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 1
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0

Which with a non-zero return of the Current_Pending_Sector, I gather, is a bad thing.

On top of that, the output of:

root@david-desktop:/home/david# smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdc
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2265 -
# 2 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 2261 1342408872


Are such errors "fixable" or should I chuck the drive and spend $100 on a new one?
And ideas?

You need to

confirm with the tools provided by western digital before RMA or disposal

What is the output of

#lspci -v

(hard disk part)

For storage of large files, xfs is a better option.