After a new PSU a few months back, and a new HDD a few more months before, I've now got an intermittent dissappearing root drive and no working CD-RW.

Basically the last two days, after leaving my PC on for a little and coming back, I've encountered an error with KDE apps opening but warning about not being able to save config files, then Firefox wouldn't load, and the shutdown had loads of temp file FAILEDs. Tailing logs show they stop, seems like the HDD isn't working, but Linux is coping with what it already got into RAM.
First though was backup some more stuff! Maybe it's the newish drive (Seagate PATA) or PSU (Antec EarthWatt).

Then I try using my old CD-RW drive, and first time after a boot it'll see the blank disc, then K3B fails at the power calibration, then warns DMA's off. Then no media found after that.
Previously it had been known to burn fine but only the DVD drive could then manage to read the disc.

I'm thinking the two are connected, and hoping my big new root drive's not about to go as well as my burner, but also don't suddently want a failing cap to kill my mobo or PSU or worse.

Any ideas about how to investigate with SMART, voltage monitoring, etc??

Are the HDD and the CD-RW connected to the same controller chip? If so the problem might be in the controller chip.

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Steve Stites

Nope, the CD-RW and DVD are on IDE-0, Windows HDD and Linux HDD on IDE-1.

IDE-0 and IDE-1 are on the same IDE chipset. Do you know the make and model of your IDE chipset?

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Steve Stites

Ah, then my board is an MSI K8N Neo4 (I believe F rather than Ultra or Platinum if they're the options, can find out) with an nForce4 chipset.

Ok so today I managed to burn a cd image, but now the dvd-rom can't read it either... Not liking where this is going. Again after trying, k3b said DMA was now disabled on the drive.

Any ideas for commands or otherwise to try to debug this? Think I'll try swapping the CD-RW in a min.

Edit: After booting into XP, the DVD drive reads Hero ok, and back in linux it does too...
Not that burned CD though, still sounds bad and stalls X before k3b says nothing's there.
A blank didn't seem to be read in the DVD drive, but now the CD-RW's found it and having a go at burning...
Nope that didn't work, just stalled.

Ok, after a bit of searching online, I've come up with a few possible causes and solutions, but still need help with testing, and welcome other suggestions.

• It could be the IDE controller. Would this mean a new motherboard, or would SATA drives avoid this problem?
• It could be the PSU. I could try swapping my 8800GTS for the old 6600 and then swap my older PSU back in.
• It could be the cd-rw finally dying, gumming up the IDE controller?
• It could be scsi emulation being used for the ide drives. Where to check (and why only now)?

As for the first option, I've probably got to put together my replaced components into a pc for my sis, so buying a couple of drives and a mobo would be acceptable, providing I can come up with 2 working combos. If I migrate to SATA drives and she get the new mobo, it'd be ok as long as nothing else on my mobo is likely to go. But first I need to eliminate the drives or PSU as cause.

I'm not likely to get this sorted before the weekend when I'm planning to be away from home, so my priority is to be sure I've backed up everything, then start taking things apart.

"It could be the IDE controller. Would this mean a new motherboard, or would SATA drives avoid this problem?"

It would mean a new controller. You would plug in an IDE controller card and use the BIOS to disable the motherboard IDE chipset.

"It could be the cd-rw finally dying, gumming up the IDE controller?"

You could test that by swapping in another cd-rw.


"It could be scsi emulation being used for the ide drives. Where to check (and why only now)?"

scsi emulation is obsolete. You can check for scsi emulation by looking at the device assignments for your CD-RW in /etc/fstab.

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Steve Stites

Right, no scsi visible in fstab.
CD-RW swapping may happen tonight.
PSU and GPU swapping less likely this week.
Chance that it's both the CD-RW and the HDD, or one's damaged the other... minimal, but SMART could be used to check?
I think I'd maybe rather keep the mobo and just get SATA drives rather than an IDE controller card, giving my sis a new socket939 mobo and my old proc, GPU & drives. Still not certain about her system atm.

Swapped the CD-RW with another, same brand. Dug a few discs down in this new pack of CD-Rs and bingo, 3/3 CDs burned without problem.
K3B has a slight graphics error when listing disc details but no problem apparent with new drive & discs.

Finger's crossed that's it and no IDE/HDD problem.

Sis ain't getting now't new atm btw.