ubuntu-x-swat team mailing list archive

[DaneM <dmutters@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've just determined that my Windows 7 hard drive (750GB, NTFS,
/dev/sdb) was faulty.  It had around 100 bad sectors reported in the
SMART logs, according to the Disk Utility (System > Administration >
Disk Utility [in Natty]), and I discovered that the huge amount of I/O
wait occurred only when I was accessing this drive, especially for a
long data transfer (copy/move, etc.).  Notably, after the first few
hundred MB at around 45MB/s, it slowed abruptly to a crawl of about
5MB/s via 3GB/s SATA.  It seemed to make little difference whether I had
it mounted read-only (which is faster for NTFS on Linux), or r/w, and
was equally slow in Windows 7 and in Linux (Ubuntu Natty).

I've since replaced the drive with a new 1TB SATA HD after testing it
for bad sectors (using 'sudo badblocks -svb 4096 /dev/sdx'), and have
noticed a dramatic speed increase.  I've not yet checked whether the
dmesg logs report this same error message as before, but I'll check when
I get around to it.

So, here's my request for information from those experiencing this bug:

-Please ensure that SMART monitoring is enabled for all your drives, in
BIOS.

-Open System > Administration > Disk Utility.  Click on each of your
drives, in turn, and click on the button for its SMART status.  Please
copy and paste any error entries you see, as well as anything that
stands out to you.

-Please run the following command on each of your hard drives.  You can
do this on multiple drives at once, although I recommend not running
many more instances than you have CPU cores.  It's OK (and safe) to run
this on mounted drives, even while data is being written to them.  'sudo
badblocks -svb 4096 /dev/sdx'  (Replace "sdx" with the device name for
the hard drive you intend to test.  Use only one drive per command, and
DO NOT include the partition number--i.e. type "/dev/sda", and NOT
"/dev/sda1".)  Post all output from these commands to this thread.  If
any bad sectors at all are found--which will be noted by their block
number--then your drive is bad, and should be replaced.  This can
usually be done under warranty, via the manufacturer's (Seagate, Western
Digital, etc.--not Best Buy or similar).  Badblocks will take a VERY
long time to run, especially on a broken drive, so please be patient and
continue until the end, or until you find a bad sector.

-Finally, run this command to get some verification and more information
from SMART: 'sudo smartctl --log error /dev/sdx'.  Replace sdx with your
drive's /dev/ entry.

Please post all output from the above.  I'm not a developer, but I have
a whole lot of experience in dealing with the practical application of
hardware testing and business-level computer repair.  If my hunch is
correct, this will allow you do solve your problems related to this bug
once and for all!  I'm honestly not sure how the sound driver relates to
the performance problems or the hard drive failure I had, but given the
excessive I/O wait that slowed down all 4 of my 2.66GHz CPU cores, it
wouldn't surprise me if it's causing timeouts or other problems that the
sound driver is sensitive to.

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your responses!

--Dane

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu-X,
which is subscribed to nvidia-graphics-drivers in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/267913

Title:
  hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a
  bigger bdl_pos_adj