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#1 2012-10-10 23:33:52

Roken
Member
From: South Wales, UK
Registered: 2012-01-16
Posts: 1,251

SSD and ATA errors

As I have documented in other threads, I've had some problems with an SSD mounted as root recently, and have solved these. My original problems started with a faulty unit (OCZ Agility 3 - which appears to have a massive failure rate). I replaced it with a Crucial M4, and have had a stable system for 4 -5 days now with no ATA errors. However, I've made one or two compromises to achieve this. When I first fitted the new (replacement) drive I set it up much the same way as the faulty one, with three partitions. /boot, /, and  a spare. Almost immediately I started getting ata freezes and filesystem corruption (not as bad as the OCZ, but still worrying). I did a factory wipe of the drive, set up the partitions again, but this time I built TRIM into the filesystem, and I have only migrated /. /boot remains on a platter, and the spare is mounted in userspace without issue. It appears for all intents and purposes that if I put /boot on to the SSD that is enough to prompt the ata bus errors (I'll admit I could be wrong and the factory wipe may have settled some stuff down).

So, having now migrated my system a total of a dozen times including the faulty drive, I'm reluctant to change things, but I am curious as to whether I am the only person to notice this. I'm 90% certain that /boot on the SSD is the root of the problems. Leaving /boot on a spinner doesn't cost me any noticable difference since only the kernel is loaded from the spinner. Everything else comes from the SSD. It would, however, be useful to document observed failures of SSD and the (probable) fixes or methods to avoid problems. SSDs are gaining popularity, and such problems are likely to surface more and more frequently.

I invite discussion or observations that will show me to be right or wrong, but which will/may help future migrations for others.


Ryzen 5900X 12 core/24 thread - RTX 3090 FE 24 Gb, Asus Prime B450 Plus, 32Gb Corsair DDR4, Cooler Master N300 chassis, 5 HD (1 NvME PCI, 4SSD) + 1 x optical.
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#2 2012-10-10 23:48:00

graysky
Wiki Maintainer
From: :wq
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,592
Website

Re: SSD and ATA errors

Look elsewhere for your instabilities.  I know of many systems that have setups like this including my workstation that has / and /boot on my SSD and is rock solid.  Look to your hardware for instabilities.  I saw in your sig you are overclocking... are you sure that isn't the cause of your issues?  Even if you stress tested the CPU for rounding errors under loads for extended times, you could experience bad things with your discs.  I dunno about AMD overclocking but bad things can happen on Intel systems when the system bus is overclocked... things like burning out HDD controllers for example smile

Last edited by graysky (2012-10-10 23:50:51)


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#3 2012-10-11 08:08:02

fabertawe
Member
From: Lloegr
Registered: 2009-11-24
Posts: 279

Re: SSD and ATA errors

Well this isn't much help but I'm also running an OCZ Agility 3 with an overclocked AMD Phenom II X4 965BE @ 3.82 Ghz. I've never had a single problem, the drive runs magnificently. I don't have a separate /boot.


Ryzen 9 5950X, X570S Aorus Pro AX, RX 6600, Arch x86_64

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