At first: Thank you very much for the detailled information!
Alan Cox wrote:
> Bad CRC indicates a data transfer problem between the drive and the
> controller. The CRC is computed one end and verified the other. The OS
> isn't directly involved.
>
> This usually means either
> #1 A 40 wire cable in use for > UDMA33
Not the case. Yesterday, I even replaced the 40 wire cable, in use for
the DVD device, with a 80 wire one.
> #2 A drive plugged into the middle of the cable and none on the end
Yes, this was the case. I plugged the drive on the end now, but the
drive, which was plugged into the middle of the cable, wasn't the one,
which errors, it was the DVD device (hdc).
> #3 The short part of the cable connected between a drive and the
> controller not the long part
Not the case.
> And occassionally it may indicate power, iffy connectors or electrical
> noise problems.
... don't know about how to find and remove such problems...
I still have those messages, but now there seem to be much less of them.
It would really help me, if someone could tell me about how critical
such error messages are.
Is this a common problem of IDE connections? May I just ignore those
messages, if I tried anything to get rid of them, or do they tell me
"get a new hardware, the old one will fail, soon"? Will my data be
read/written without mistakes, even with those errors?
Its interesting, that I only get those messages using the Slackware
install CD, which has many kernel modules built into the kernel.
With the "slimmed down" kernel of slackware, which even needs an initrd
for ext2 root devices, I don't get this errors, so currently I only get
them while installing and not while my daily work on my system...
Maybe I'll install the "huge" kernel, with the many "built in" stuff,
onto my regular Slackware install, tomorrow, to see if this will cause
those errors.
Thank you *very* much for any help and information!
Yours
Manuel
> I still have those messages, but now there seem to be much less of them.
>
> It would really help me, if someone could tell me about how critical
> such error messages are.
The CRC errors are indicative of cable or similar problems but each time
you see a CRC error the transmission is repeated so it should never cause
corruption. If there are repeated CRC errors it will give up and use PIO
instead.
> With the "slimmed down" kernel of slackware, which even needs an initrd
> for ext2 root devices, I don't get this errors, so currently I only get
> them while installing and not while my daily work on my system...
Could be one driver is upsetting another, or perhaps triggering more
hardware which in turn triggers this. You'd really need to know what the
extra driver which triggers the problem is ?