stevecoh1
July 5th, 2009, 05:48 PM
This is a Dell Inspiron 530. I've had it for two years. It was originally a Windows machine. (I didn't know at the time Dell would have sold it to me with Ubuntu.) It now runs 8.04. Previously (about 3 months ago, it ran 7.10. More or less since Day 1, I've had the following problem (in both OS versions).
It doesn't always boot up. I don't boot it that often so it isn't a big deal but it's really annoying when I do. Sometimes it boots the first time. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 times, eventually it boots.
When it fails, the orange progress bar goes back and forth. I learned today how to remove the quiet and splash parameters to see what is going on.
When it succeeds, dmesg looks like this:
When it works, dmesg has something like this:
[ 28.155310] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf800 ctl 0xf700 bmdma 0xf400 irq 18
[ 28.155312] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf600 ctl 0xf500 bmdma 0xf408 irq 18
[ 28.358861] ata1.00: ATA-7: ST3320620AS, 3.AAE, max UDMA/133
[ 28.358865] ata1.00: 625142448 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
[ 28.425357] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
When it fails, I see the following scroll by:
ata1.00 failed to read native max address (err-mask=0x4)
I don't believe there is anything wrong with the hard drive. the check routines never find anything to complain about.
I should also mention that I have another identical hard drive that I use from time to time to make backups of the system as when doing system upgrades. It is not currently connected. I don't honestly remember which was the original one.
Is there some boot-time parameter I can use to end the insanity? Or some other way to solve this problem?
It doesn't always boot up. I don't boot it that often so it isn't a big deal but it's really annoying when I do. Sometimes it boots the first time. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 times, eventually it boots.
When it fails, the orange progress bar goes back and forth. I learned today how to remove the quiet and splash parameters to see what is going on.
When it succeeds, dmesg looks like this:
When it works, dmesg has something like this:
[ 28.155310] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf800 ctl 0xf700 bmdma 0xf400 irq 18
[ 28.155312] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf600 ctl 0xf500 bmdma 0xf408 irq 18
[ 28.358861] ata1.00: ATA-7: ST3320620AS, 3.AAE, max UDMA/133
[ 28.358865] ata1.00: 625142448 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
[ 28.425357] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
When it fails, I see the following scroll by:
ata1.00 failed to read native max address (err-mask=0x4)
I don't believe there is anything wrong with the hard drive. the check routines never find anything to complain about.
I should also mention that I have another identical hard drive that I use from time to time to make backups of the system as when doing system upgrades. It is not currently connected. I don't honestly remember which was the original one.
Is there some boot-time parameter I can use to end the insanity? Or some other way to solve this problem?