*BSD News Article 42133


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From: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Seagate ST3491 problem
Date: 6 Feb 1995 03:34:12 -0000
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A.M. Zanker (A.M.Zanker@ncl.ac.uk) wrote:
: I've just bought a new 428Mb Seagate ST3491 IDE disk to run
: FreeBSD 2.0R off. This replaces an old IBM 170MB IDE drive
: which already had FreeBSD installed on it. I'm slaving the
: new drive off a Maxtor 540MB drive which is exclusively used
: by DOS.

: The problem - for the first 45 minutes or so after switching
: on the machine, the drive is making a loud mechanical clicking
: noise every few seconds, often accompanied by an error message
: in bright white saying something along the lines of "timing out
: on wd1". There is often a loud grinding noise as well. After about
: 45 mins or so everything settles down and the system runs very
: smoothly.

: The drive is partitioned as 32mb swap (at the beginning of the
: disk) followed by the rest as root partition. 

: Does this sound like a mechanical fault with the disk or possibly
: something that the FreeBSD wd driver doesn't like about it?

: Thanks in advance,

Probably nothing to do with your problem, but I don't think it's a good
idea to have swap at the start of a FreeBSD partition.  I tried this with
1.1.5.1 and it kept eating my disklabel when the machine swapped.  From
what I can make out, newfs leaves room for labels.

--
Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>

Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....