Hard Disk Failure – Troubleshooting Mysterious Hard Disk Issues

disksata

My new 1,5 TB ext4 Hard Disk makes mysterious noises and fails to read and write. But not always. Sometimes it just works. But then I get those following errors. Does anyone know a solution for that or is my new WD Caviar Black 1.5 TB hard disk broken?

[  551.162286] ata7: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 310)
[  551.162294] ata7.00: link offline, clearing class 1 to NONE
[  551.178223] ata7: EH complete
[  551.190802] ata7: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x4040000 action 0xe frozen
[  551.190807] ata7: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed
[  551.190811] ata7: SError: { CommWake DevExch }
[  551.190818] ata7: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[  551.190822] ata7: hard resetting link

Update Mainboard P7P55D LE: http://www.asus.de/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1156/P7P55D_LE/#specifications

Best Answer

That SATA error is not good, but can only really be diagnosed by trying the following:

  • pop this disk in another box
  • put another disk in this box

That will narrow it down. If the disk still fails in the other box, try and get the data off it if it gives you some uptime, then ditch it

If the other disk fails in your computer, it is the SATA card, replace it (or if SATA is on the motherboard - you'll need to look at replacing the motherboard)

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