hardware doctors!

["Ulrike Schmidt" <ulrike@example.com>]

The patient is a Aptiva with two harddrives, one is running Windows (hda), the other one RedHat Linux (hdb). Since I did not manage to connect Redhat to ISDN I am doing my mail with Windows. When I came back after a long vacation and started up Windows I heard strange sounds comming out of what I think was one of the harddrives. It was kind of a loud scratching, and sometimes also some strange clicking, and seemed to me as if the read/write head was going long ways. But I thought maybe the machine was always so loud and I had just forgotten over using more silent machines the last weeks, and Windows was running without any problems. When I tried to boot linux I got the the usual startup messages up to:

 

Starting X Font server:

 

But then (I was not quick enough with copying by hand, there might be some small mistakes):

 

Starting linuxconf hdb: irq timeout: status=0xd0 {Busy}

ide0: reset: success

hdb: irq timeout: status=0xd0 {Busy}

ide0: reset timed out, status =0x80

hdb: status timout: status=0x80 {Busy}

hdb: dirve not ready for command

end_request: I/O eerror, dev 03:46 (hdb, sector 7160)

hdb: drive not ready for command

 

... and an endless repetition of some of the lines with different sector numbers. I had to take the machine down by pulling the cord. I thought maybe some cables got loose and finally dared to open the case, but all I could reach to seemed ok and anyway I have only vague ideas what is where, but my impression is that the strange sounds are comming from hda and nothing from hdb, which would make sense to me, since hdb seems not be ready for command. What might be the problem, what could I do, any recommendations?

 

As always a lot of thanks in advance,

 

Uli