[ILUG] [alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk: Re: IDE error on 2.4.17]

[Wynne, Conor]

Bonjour, 

I find this strange, I have never had a harddrive corruption, and I have always used DMA by default. I don't think its down to Redhat either. In all the kernels src's i've seen for some time now, since 2.2.something, have been like this. 

Now I do NOT use hdparm, for no particlar reason actually. Probably because when I did use it, I didn't notice any speed increase, and the mandrake install since 7.0 warns that it "may cause drive corruption" So I never bothered. When I eventually add a DVD, I'll use it then [if I remember a mail correctly from one of ye]

Possibly the chipsets you had were those buggy ones, can't remember what they are called, but they are there to prevent corruption. RZ1000? and another one. 

The chipsets I now use are HPT366, and VIA82cxx [AFAIR] [UDMA100], and SCSI in the others. 

Then only time I ever came across corruption was with drives that were dying/died during install/dodgy IDE controller -> this is how I got "her indoors" to agree to buying more mobo's and stuff.

A+ mes amis,
CW

-------------------------
I am most probably taking this out of context[1], but the question seemed
perfectly valid.

I have had endless hours of fun with Linux corrupting my IDE hard drive,
both on a one year old laptop and on a three year old PC. Part of the
problem is RedHat, which enables DMA by default on an early 2.4 kernel. (I
don't know what the other distributions do).

The quality of the Linux IDE drivers is also not optimal, although I have
poked through the code and I can understand why. Lack of a proper
published standard and many differing IDE implementations seem to be part
of the problem. Made me want to go buy a SCSI drive for my
laptop. *cough*

So from my point of view, issues with UDMA would belong on the kernel list -
even if it only serves to make developers aware of the problem.

However, I suspect that for Mr Cox to get so hacked off with someone there
had to be a lot of stupid questions preceding the quoted one. I would expect
that the person asking the question had at least downloaded the latest
stable kernel and compiled it. I would also expect that he had read the
relevant list FAQ's. Presumably he did neither.

- Matthew

[1] I could go look at the kernel archives, but I am not in the mood to do
it over a 9.6 dial up so I thought I would spam this list instead.



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