Is this disk toast ?

[Luke Kearney]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Swiger" <cswiger at mac.com>
To: "lukek" <lukek at meibin.net>
Cc: "FreeBSD" <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 12:50 AM
Subject: Re: Is this disk toast ?


> lukek wrote:
> > I have tried re-formatting this disk and even whacked it into a winblows
box
> > with the hope of writing out another partition table but no luck thus
far.
> >
> > Can someone give me some ideas on what to do about this ?
>
> Start my making sure your machine has the latest BIOS flashed, then check
> whether you can set the drive to "LBA" mode rather than, say, "auto".  If
your
> hardware is having problems identifying the drive geometry properly, this
may
> help.  Then use /stand/sysinstall to repartition the disk, although you
could
> also use FDISK from DOS as a last resort.  Sometimes creating a small
(10MB) DOS
> partition before installing FreeBSD also helps resolve disk geometry
problems.
>
> [ If you can't partition the drive even via MS-DOS' FDISK, you most likely
have
> a hardware problem. ]
>

I think the problem has turned out to be more fundamental than a bios issue.
After fiddling around for a while I go the disk
reporting the right size in the bios but my issues still persist. I am
trying to create a vinum stripe of 200gb using three 80gb drives.
What is happening is that once I get the bios right and vinum creates the
array without error I then try to copy a very large dir to this machine
using
rsync. Just because I am cursed the server then freezes, I mean nothing, no
keyboard at the terminal ssh connections die kind of die.
I have fooled around with these disks and am at wits end with it.  The
drives are set for LBA FWIW. I cannot see why this cp dies on me. If it were
one bad disk then I could replace it but as things stand every disk now
stands suspect ;-(

LukeK