Hi,
I just received the 5. replacement of a 4.3 GB drive from
Micropolis 3243 since Dec.21, 1995.
System: Alpha 200 4/233, Digital UNIX 3.2c, 128 MByte
Internal drive Rz26L ( /, /usr, swap).
External drive: Desktop enclosure Micropolis 4.3 GB (swap, userspace)
The system is less than one year old.
I operate an identical system with a 3243 drive which runs fine!
The original drive lasted 3 month when fsck could not check out
one partition, too many block could not be read.
The next drive failed after 12 h (spun down , suddenly started again,
basically hang up the machine).
The next relacement spun up on power up, made mechanical noises and
shut down right away.
Drive repacement # 4:
Installation in external enclosure, power up fine, the system sees
the drive, reboot, disklabel, newfs, fsck the new filesystem failed
with
CANNOT READ BLK: 848
CONTINUE {Y/N]
if continued more mess.
I did low level formating without problems, changed firmeware
suggested by Micropolis to no avail. So I got a new drive.
I made a disklabel used as reference the disktab entry
mic|Mic|Micropolis 3243 Winchester:\
:ty=winchester:dt=SCSI:ns#139:nt#19:nc#3956:\
:oa#0:pa#171665:ba#8192:fa#1024:\
:ob#171665:pb#1478960:bb#8192:fb#1024:\
:oc#0:pc#8388315:bc#8192:fc#1024:\
:od#1650625:pd#2245896:bd#8192:fd#1024:\
:oe#3896521:pe#2245896:be#8192:fe#1024:\
:of#6142417:pf#2245898:bf#8192:ff#1024:\
:og#1650625:pg#6737690:bg#8192:fg#1024:
#disklabel -rw rz4 mic
# disklabel -r rz4
# /dev/rrz4a:
type: SCSI
disk: MIC
label:
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 139
tracks/cylinder: 19
sectors/cylinder: 2641
cylinders: 3956
sectors/unit: 8388315
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0 # milliseconds
track-to-track seek: 0 # milliseconds
drivedata: 0
8 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
a: 171665 0 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 0 - 64)
b: 1478960 171665 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 65 - 624)
c: 8388315 0 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 0 - 3176*)
d: 2245896 1650625 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 625 - 1475*)
e: 2245896 3896521 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 1475*- 2325*)
f: 2245898 6142417 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 2325*- 3176*)
g: 6737690 1650625 unused 1024 8192 # (Cyl. 625 - 3176*)
h: 0 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - -1)
# newfs /dev/rrz4a
Warning: 1 sector(s) in last cylinder unallocated
/dev/rrz4a: 171664 sectors in 65 cylinders of 19 tracks, 139 sectors
87.9MB in 5 cyl groups (16 c/g, 21.64MB/g, 4992 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
32, 42432, 84832, 127232, 169632,
# fsck -o /dev/rrz4a
/sbin/ufs_fsck -o /dev/rrz4a
** /dev/rrz4a
** Last Mounted on
** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
CANNOT READ: BLK 127248
CONTINUE? [yn]
I continued here and repeated the fsck and it completed without error.
diskx -f /dev/rrz4a -w (with all its implications of destroying the disk
label) run for 15 min without reporting problems.
On partition d I run into the same snag, fsck reports everytime a different
block unreadable.
Running diskx
Read error, requested 40448, returned -1
Disk Transfer Statistics
Part Seeks Seek_Er Writes Writ_Er MB_Write Reads Read_Er MB_Read Data_Er
a 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
b 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
c 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
d 56863 0 87965 0 2709.7 56858 1 2193.3 28234
e 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
f 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
g 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
h 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0
It is still testing.
Has somebody seen or experienced something like that?
I have changed machines, I'm running the drive on a 3000/300 with the same
frustrating result. I checked the power supply of the box, it it within
specs, allthough a bit noisy (electrically).
The termination of the box is an active, 50 Pin Centronix connector
(termination resistors on the drive removed).
After my "bad luck" with Micropolis I bought a Seagate (ST15150W) 4.3 GB
and had no problem. On the other hand I operate 5 3243 drives and only
one of them had to be replaced within the first year.
Gerfried Kumbartzki
Physics Department
Rutgers University
Received on Mon Feb 12 1996 - 21:47:06 NZDT