Re: USB 2.0 external drive silently corrupted

[Alan Stern <stern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007, Dr. C. wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> I have two Maxtor external USB drives which are causing me problems
> under various Linux kernels (Iâ??ve tried 2.6.16.53, 2.6.23.1, and
> 2.6.24-rc2). While these drives work fine under Windows, under linux I
> can partition the disks and format them, but when I attempt to read or
> write a large quantity of data, the drive becomes corrupted, the
> content becomes trashed and the partition table disappears:
> 
> I had a detailed email prepared, but since my email keeps getting
> rejected due to rule match, I'll keep this brief: In the system log,
> the only thing that appears is an innocuous reset:, but turning on the
> kernel-storage-debug flag, we can see a bit more of what is occurring,
> something related to â??3strikesâ??:
> 
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: ehci_hcd 0000:00:03.3: devpath 1 ep8in 3strikes
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: Status code -71; transferred 23552/6553
> 6
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: -- unknown error
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: Bulk data transfer result 0x4
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: -- transport indicates error, resetting
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: storage_pre_reset
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: Status code 0; transferred 65536/65536
> Nov 11 19:18:55 www kernel: usb-storage: -- transfer complete
> 
> If this gets through I'll post more detail. Any suggestions? Is this
> just a case of hardware bugs being exposed linux? Should I open a
> kernel bug?

I don't think it's a kernel bug.  Much more likely is a low-level
hardware or firmware failure.  It could be a hardware bug, or it could
be a bad cable (or the equivalent).

The kernel log posted above isn't complete, that is, there are lines 
missing in the middle.  You'd be better off using usbmon (see 
Documentation/usb/usbmon.txt).

Alan Stern


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
_______________________________________________
Linux-usb-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe, use the last form field at:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-users