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[OCLUG-Tech] SATA drive bootup query

I recently got a new 500GB ST3500630AS SATA hard drive as second SATA drive and put it in a machine with an Intel 945GNT motherboard with Dual core 3 GHz Intel processor. There's a 250GB ST3250824AS drive on the #1 SATA, a DVD-RAM on the master of the single IDE port on the MB, and a WDC 1200JB 120GB PATA on a PCI IDE card (Promise Ultra TX2 133 card).

I've formatted the 500GB as roughtly 2/3 1/3 into two ext3 partitions.

In the last week or so, I've been getting errors that sdc2 (2nd partition) superblock not readable. Spent some time playing badblock games before I realized that the Ubuntu "single user" mode that is offered after disk read "failure" is distinctly strange. It turns out /dev/sdc1 gets mounted with no data visible, and /dev/sdc2 isn't created at all.

Sometimes a reboot works, sometimes not. I'd thought Knoppix was working every time i.e., some problem with recognizing drives and setting up the kernel modules, but today even Knoppix had a failure (and a strange one -- terminal had white on white characters on a generally dark background, drives weren't there, other weirdness).
I seem to be OK once booted, but this is clearly not satisfactory.

Anyone any ideas of how I might diagnose the problem. I suspect some sort of interaction between elements.

And yes, I've tried unplugging and replugging connections -- in fact moved drive from SATA 2 to SATA 3 -- things seemed to work. Also played games with HD pre-delay. Because of intermittent nature of troubles, things sometimes seem to work. However, problems getting more frequent.

dmesg from successful boot does show some warnings, but I don't know how to interpret them, or if they are important. I've been trying to look at dmesg from a failure, but cannot seem to access it.

Suggestions welcome.

JN

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