civileme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The X66 is safe to use as you have described it. What is dangerous is > overdriving. hdparm -k1 -d1 -X66 /dev/hda (66:UDMA2) I guess you mean if I change the hard drive setting with DataLifeGuard and then do "hdparm -d1 X69" (69:UDMA5) that this is dangerous, or if I try to set it to UDMA6 (:133Mhz)? Mandrake 9.0 uses UDMA5 automatically (without program hdparm), is this configured on booting are is it written at installation of ML9.0 in some configuration file? What program in Mandrake 9.0 is responsible for this, or is it just the kernel that figures out what the highest UDMA setting is?
> Also, IIRC, DataLifeGuard phones home and gives you warning if your > drive is about to fail (and it works on non-WDs too). DataLifeGuard is just an utility on a floppy disk, or does it install a phone home program in Windows XP? > As for the variance of speed, consider this... Ok, then I'll probably set it with hdparm to UDMA2. Hm, where is the -k1 option for hdparm written to? man hdparm doesn't talk about a configuration file. > yes check out man elvtune man elvtune: I/O elevator tuner: don't know enough about it to understand this. > a secondary cosmic ray is a significant noise source. Not much charge > moves on those cables at the interface voltage in that time span. "secondary cosmic ray": didn't know it was that delicate, how are IDE-cables protected on the Space Station and what speed would they have? > You can download an ATA66 disable utility (windows compatible) for > your WD. I think this utility is also on the DataLifeGuard floppy disk dlgudma.exe - Data Lifeguard Ultra ATA Management Something else I wonder: A lot of system files (e.g. /usr/bin/play) disappeared, they were cleared because of corruption (bad mode,deleted/unused inode,illegal character device,...). Did the corruption occur with these messages in syslog: "EXT3-fs error (device ide0(3,2)): ext3_new_block: Allocating block in system zone - block = 294914" ? What do these messages mean? I have no idea how on low-level files are written to hard drives. I guess that over the IDE-cable a command must be sent (write/read) with an address (where to store/read on the hard drive) and the data that must be written ( how is this done? Do 512 bytes of data have to be written even if you only want one bit changed? I guess from Civilemes postings that sectors of data on a hard drive are 512 bytes, is this correct? Or do you have to write a full cluster (: group of sectors) even if you want one bit changed?) How could the corruption on my file system have occurred? Was a "read" command changed to a "write" command, was an address changed into another address so that an important part of the file system got overwritten that resulted in massive file corruption? In syslog there were about 22345 messages indicating inodes, files as corrupt. How many writes are needed to corrupt that many files? Did it just occur with one command or was my system producing random data corruption during several seconds? Or is it possible that the data on my hard drive was OK, but that it got corrupted when it got read by my system? Does Linux check, reread when it encounters CRC-errors? Is it possible that data corruption occurs without being noticed immediately? Is it only noticed when a damaged block is read and compared to its CRC? On another partition I have Windows XP: could corruption just as well have occurred during a Windows XP session? Would Windows XP also have noticed it at the next booting? I read that Western Digital supports only Windows and Solaris, does this mean that its drivers for these OSes protect better against CRC-errors in UDMA 3,4,5? Can Linux protect against these possible errors by rereading the hard drive after a write command and thus checking if it was written correctly? Would a double check like this seriously affect performance? Last question: what hard drives do you recommend: Maxtor, Seagate? I read through some hard drive forums, isn't clear which hard drives are the best. vatbier
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