Since replacing a defective disk, I am now suffering slow start up with my 2 Adaptec 1340 cards seeming to take an age to dscover disks, one disk in particular it would seem.

 

I have updated to 4.7b1 from 4.5.6 with no benefit. The server works OK once booted, but I suffer the occassion stutter with Blu Ray playback.

 

I attached my syslog from rebooting after updating to 4.7 b1, and are concerned about the following lines, as it would appear that speeds are being reduced:-

 

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)

Jan 16 08:41:44 Tower kernel: ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133

syslog-2011-01-16.txt

All I can see in the syslog is the one drive that is slow to initialize, and the network being slow to connect, but neither seems serious.  The SATA link speed is slowed to 1.5Gbps for that one drive, but that is still a faster channel than the drive needs, so should not be a problem.  That translates to about 150MB/s, which is somewhat faster than the drive's specs.  There is no indication as to the cause of the difficulty, could either be a problem with that drive, or a problem with that port or cable.  You might determine which it is, by swapping connections with another drive, then checking a subsequent syslog to see if the problem stayed with the port or the drive.  Also try a different SATA cable.

 

The BluRay issue is more likely a problem with the playback machine (I think).

Make sure they are no loose cables (data and power) since you recently replaced a defective drive and it is easy at that point to mess with the cabling.

 

ata2 is a Seagate drive and ata3 is another Seagate drive (same model and firmware) but initialized at 3Gbps

 

I do not know how old are they, but I will check the SMART status and run both short and long SMART test (you may have to increase the spin-down time to a few hours for the long test).

Long tests on large drives take 4 or 5 hours or more.  Disable the spin-down timer or it will abort the test when forced to spin down.

How do I determine which disk is ata2, as I have several disks of the same make / model

 

It would appear that the syslog does not indicate disk serial numbers, I have not been able to crossreference infomation shown on Unraid's device tab and the syslog

The syslog does have that info, but yes, it is very confusing, especially when the kernel picks up the USB drive *after* the 2 disk controllers.  I believe ata2 corresponds to scsi-1 (which is sdc), the second SATA port on the first controller card it found.

 

Tower kernel: ata2.00: ATA-8: ST31000528AS, CC37, max UDMA/133
...
Tower kernel: scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST31000528AS     CC37 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdc] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
...
Tower emhttp: pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 host1 (sdc) ST31000528AS_6VP1QLF8
...
Tower kernel: md: import disk2: [8,32] (sdc) ST31000528AS     6VP1QLF8 size: 976762552