SATA SSD inaccessible, fails on initial end-of-drive read command

SATA SSD inaccessible, fails on initial end-of-drive read command

[Mark K]

Hi,

I have a system with secondary SATA SSD (OCZ Saber 1000 480GB) which is
readable in Windows.

The drive capacity shown when probed by the kernel during boot is 937703088 =
0x37E436B0 sectors.

The drive seems to be failing the command issued by libata to read its last 8
sectors.

After reporting
  ata8.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x40 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
  ata8.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
  ata8.00: cmd 60/08:30:a8:36:e4/00:00:37:00:00/40 tag 6 ncq dma 4096 in
it tries resetting the link several times and eventually gives up.

In this state, while the block device and sg device (/dev/sda and /dev/sg5) are
still present, any attempt to e.g. issue INQUIRY or READ CAPACITY fails, along
with data access commands like READ and WRITE, meaning the drive is
inaccessible in Linux.

I'm not sure whether the drive itself locks up after receiving that read
command, or whether libata is giving up too soon, or whether that error could
just be ignored.

Is there any way to tell libata to avoid issuing the initial end-of-drive read
command? Or is that read issued by the block layer?


[    1.499334] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[    1.505518] scsi host0: ata_generic
[    1.505703] scsi host2: ata_generic
[    1.516083] ata8: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf7f12000 port 0xf7f12180 irq 41
[    1.830511] ata8: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[    1.830975] ata8.00: ATA-8: OCZ-SABER1000, 1.01, max UDMA/133
[    1.830978] ata8.00: 937703088 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
[    1.836358] ata8.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   33.943503] ata8.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x40 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[   33.943585] ata8.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[   33.943631] ata8.00: cmd 60/08:30:a8:36:e4/00:00:37:00:00/40 tag 6 ncq dma 4096 in
[   33.943735] ata8.00: status: { DRDY }
[   33.943768] ata8: hard resetting link
[   39.295447] ata8: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   43.975468] ata8: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
[   43.975531] ata8: hard resetting link
[   49.327467] ata8: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   54.007448] ata8: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
[   54.007512] ata8: hard resetting link
[   59.359466] ata8: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   89.059463] ata8: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
[   89.059532] ata8: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
[   89.059533] ata8: hard resetting link
[   94.111441] ata8: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
[   94.111508] ata8: reset failed, giving up
[   94.111545] ata8.00: disabled
[   94.111668] ata8: EH complete