Trouble booting SSD drive this morning

D

drhowarddrfine

Sat down in front of workstation running FreeBSD 9.3 with a single Intel SSD 250GB just running UFS. Saw this on boot:

Code: 
mountroot>

ahcich0: Timeout on slot 0 port 0
ahcich0: is 00000002 cs 00000000 ss 00000000 rc 00000001 tfd 00000050 sevr 00000000
chd 00710017

(aprobe0: ahcich0: 0: 0: 0): ATA_IDENTIFY
(aprobe0: ahcich0: ACB: ec 00 00 00 00 40
CAM status: Command timeout
Error 5: retry was blocked

This seemed to repeat at least once after a minute or more. I think it went pretty far into the boot process before failing. iow, it didn't happen right on power up.

I usually leave my workstation on all the time but, since my sister-in-law moved in and took over that office/bedroom, it's now sitting in my bedroom so I turn it off at night. Been only doing that for about a week and now this happens.

It took five power down reboots but now things are working. I saved the dmesg, messages and mounts in /var/log/ but have to run to work. I can post them once I get there if someone asks for which one they want to see.

Thanks.
 
Intel might have utilities to analyze their SSDs. SMART data is available for some SSDs, also. Maybe that model only does housekeeping at certain times and has been put off too long. In that case, just letting the machine sit for an hour or two after a boot, possibly in a BIOS screen, could clear it up. It is also worth checking for firmware updates.
 
I didn't know they did housekeeping but that might explain why it started working while I made my breakfast. That might also explain why I never noticed the problem before since I usually leave it running.

One worrisome thing is that the workstation shut down when I tried moving it a few inches to check the filter on the case. Maybe I accidentally touched the power button but I don't think so.

It looks like sysutils/smartmontools might work with my SSD but I have to check the model when I get home.
 
I tried running sysutils/smartmontools last night. It gave a "passed" on the initial test but I didn't get to let it complete a full test before going to bed. I wanted to turn the computer off overnight to see what happened. It ran all day yesterday while I was gone and I used it at night with no problems.

Turning it on again this morning, it stalled with the error "Error 5 retry was blocked" but I rebooted and everything seems fine at the moment.

I have to run again this morning so I hope to mess with smartctl(8) again tonight.
 
SMART data is sometimes useful, but not always. It's been a while since I've used an Intel SSD, but they used to have a Windows-based utility that would check the drive. That is more likely to do something useful than the generic SMART utilities.
 
Intel has a utility for Windows and Linux as well. If your feeling brave you can extract the .rpm file and install the libraries manually and see if it works with the updated Linux compatibility layer. Otherwise, if you have plenty of memory in the system, you could download and boot and CentOS 6.5 live ISO image and try installing the Intel toolset to the created ram drive and run it without disrupting the installed operating system. I have not tried either of these options myself so I don't know that either would work for a fact. I dual boot Windows so I haven't had the need.
 
Replace the SATA cable with a new one, power cable if possible and see if that makes any difference.
 
kpa The only reason I am going to try that is because the workstation shutdown as I noted earlier. I'm not at all a big believer in cables going bad while just sitting there. I've been using this system for hours last night and hours so far today with no issues whatsoever except when I shut it down and power it up.
 
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