[ale] Hard drive error and hard drive fan

Andrew Swerlick raswerl at emory.edu
Mon Jul 17 11:50:34 EDT 2006


I've come across a strange error that I think I've diagnosed as hard 
drive overheating, so I thought I'd get ya'lls opinion on it, and see if 
you had any recommendations for good hard drive coolers. What happens is 
this--after my computer has been on for a long time it will start 
locking up. At first the mouse will still work but then it'll freeze 
too. This usually happens when box is getting very hot (I've got a small 
case with an AMD chip, so heat is definitely an issue for me.) I can 
usually make it unfreeze by taking the case off and pointing a room fan 
directly at the hard drive. Once I get it unfrozen I run dmesg and get 
this output.

Jul 14 15:27:43 localhost kernel: [17194706.572000] hda: 
dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x20
Jul 14 15:27:43 localhost kernel: [17194706.572000] hda: DMA timeout retry
Jul 14 15:28:03 localhost kernel: [17194726.576000] hda: 
dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
Jul 14 15:28:18 localhost kernel: [17194736.576000] hda: DMA timeout error
Jul 14 15:28:18 localhost kernel: [17194736.576000] hda: dma timeout 
error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
Jul 14 15:28:18 localhost kernel: [17194736.576000] ide: failed opcode 
was: unknown
Jul 14 15:28:18 localhost kernel: [17194741.580000] hda: status timeout: 
status=0xd0 { Busy }
Jul 14 15:28:18 localhost kernel: [17194741.580000] ide: failed opcode 
was: unknown
Jul 14 15:28:18 localhost kernel: [17194741.628000] ide0: reset: success

So what I'm asking is, do you think my diagnoses of overheating is 
right? And if so, do you have any cooling solution recommendations?

~Andrew S.




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