IBM Thinkpad R31 hard disk problem ??

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Peter <peter_kinget@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have an IBM Thinkpad R31 (2 years old) with slackware 8.0 installed.
>
> Sometimes the machine simply hangs completely. Often the following
> errors are displayed:
>
> ide_dmaproc: ide_dma_time_out func only: 14
> hda: status time out: status 0x80 drive not ready for command
>
> From reading some posts this is most probably a hardware problem. I

Most probably? It IS a hardware problem! That's what's being reported in
the message! Your disk is on the way out, or it's slow waking up, or it
doesn't like working in that DMA mode. Try wriggling it around with
hdparm.

> have the impression it might be temperature related but it is not very
> consistent.
>
> If this is a hardware problem, does anyone know if this is related to
> the motherboard or the hard-disk.

Hard disk, but nobody can tell unless you swap the disk with another and
try.


> Where is the DMA chip?

Uhm, I'm not sure if there is a specific dma chip - it's a mobo support
function.

> And, is it
> really the DMA chip or something else going wrong.

It's the disk, as th emessage says. It won't respond to a dma transfer
request within the allotted time. That's not uncommon, especially if the
disk has spun down, but it's not good. Do you spin the disk down?

> Will this be fixed
> by buying a new hard disk?

Only if you also buy a new battery at the same time. Silly question.

Peter

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

>
> This sounds like a drive timeout being detected by the DMA controller, so
> I'd lean towards blaming the drive. I've seen errors like this caused by
> the drive taking too long to spin up.
>
> Go into your power options, and set the drive to always stay on, at least
> when plugged in, and see if the hangup goes away. If this turns out to be
> the case, see if there's a newer BIOS for your system board, ACPI is enabled
> in the BIOS, and make sure you have all the system updates installed. Do a
> google search for power and ACPI related issues for your model of notebook.

Thanks for all your suggestions. With hdparm I issue a sleep command a
couple of times. And yes, the drive did not come back on one or two
occasions and the computer hung after a while. Right now I have set
the time-out to infinite with hdparms and today the machine has not
had problems since. We will see in the next couple of days.

I guess I will start looking at replacement drives. I was getting too
small anyway.

Thanks again for your help,

Peter