I just noticed that one of my hard drives in my file server was very rarely spitting out this message.

hde: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hde: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }


during my investigation I saw that this is not the most rare error msg in the world, and that it can mean a dieing hard drive, or a misconfigured one.

So I ran the Seagate diagnostices on it and it said it was OK.

So I looked to see it is was misconfigured.
Its set to DMA, which this drive supports fine, so its not that.
I then looked at its chs and this is what linux reports

hde: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
hde: attached ide-disk driver.
hde: host protected area => 1
hde: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=9729/255/63, UDMA(66)

which I thought was a little strange so I searched online to see what it really is and I found this web site that says it should be 16383/16/63. However I also found another web site that it was 1023/256/63. So what is it?

And how can i fix it?

Normally I would just go into the BIOS and go from auto to manual, but this is connected to a Promise controller, and I have no idea how to get into the setting for it.

I just noticed that when I do hdparm -I /dev/hde and this is what I got. Notice the 16383/16/63 CHS.

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: ST380011A
Serial Number: 3JV0ARBL
Firmware Revision: 3.04
Standards:
Used: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2
Supported: 6 5 4 3
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 65535
heads 16 1
sectors/track 63 63
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 4128705
LBA user addressable sectors: 156301488
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 156301488
device size with M = 1024*1024: 76319 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 80026 MBytes (80 GB)
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
bytes avail on r/w long: 4 Queue depth: 1
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Recommended acoustic management value: 128, current value: 0
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 udma5
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=240ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* READ BUFFER cmd
* WRITE BUFFER cmd
* Host Protected Area feature set
* Look-ahead
* Write cache
* Power Management feature set
Security Mode feature set
* SMART feature set
* FLUSH CACHE EXT command
* Mandatory FLUSH CACHE command
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* 48-bit Address feature set
SET MAX security extension
* DOWNLOAD MICROCODE cmd
* SMART self-test
* SMART error logging
Security:
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
not supported: enhanced erase
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0 determined by the jumper
Checksum: correct

I did get those errors combined with filesystem corruption twice with ext3 and debian.It was a driver issue in my case - the drive is still working fine one year later with reiserfs.You might want to try to google for the error message and your controller manufacturer.

I'm looking into your sugestion, but what I don't understand is why the other hard drive, on the other channel, does not have this error.

Most of the time it is a problem with the drive.In your case the only other culprits could be the channel, which would mean the mobo or the cable.
You could try to do a search of the kernel mailing list for the error message and your motherboard but most likely the drive is going down.

I'll try swapping the drives, so that they are on each others old channels and see if that makes any difference.


If it is the drive I'm supprised that the seagate tools did not report and errors. Acording to the tools the drive fine.