Re: Data corruption on IDE disk via USB.

[Joshua Ross]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 07:40:49 -0300
Rogério Brito <rbrito@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sep 29 2004, Joshua Ross wrote:
> > I have an external hard drive with an IDE interface.  This goes
> > through a USB2.0-IDE adapter.  I'm getting silent corruption of data
> > when copying big files to the drive, but not consistently.  The
> > partition was originally ext3, but I'm now mounting it ext2 and
> > sync.  Still getting the corruption.  
> 
> Which kind of corruption are you seeing? I was seeing some non-silent
> problems with an IDE drive connected in a Firewire/USB2 enclosure.
> 
	Well, I'm currently stuck in the middle of a long fsck loop.  I
successfully ran fsck once, correcting errors.  I thought I'd double
check and ran it again.  The following is a short section from it:

Restarting e2fsck from the beginning...                                 
      
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Inode 8 has illegal block(s).  Clear<y>? yes                            
      

Illegal block #4254 (1043168817) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4255 (1779650960) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4256 (119610448) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4257 (1023971144) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4258 (2687440014) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4259 (1952817553) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4260 (4225006687) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4261 (885351209) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4262 (2972213350) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4263 (367138787) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4264 (1016997915) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Too many illegal blocks in inode 8.
Clear inode<y>? yes

Restarting e2fsck from the beginning...                                 
      
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Inode 8 has illegal block(s).  Clear<y>? yes                            
      

Illegal block #4265 (3534702556) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4266 (1881325444) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4267 (965385379) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4268 (1938219089) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4270 (2567249910) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4271 (339569508) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4272 (3827439844) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4273 (3719372914) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4274 (423250370) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4275 (1503941510) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4276 (3125961630) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Too many illegal blocks in inode 8.
Clear inode<y>? yes

Restarting e2fsck from the beginning...                                 
      
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Inode 8 has illegal block(s).  Clear<y>? yes                            
      

Illegal block #4277 (4003997203) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4278 (1927319268) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4279 (1988850371) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4280 (1493009126) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4281 (96127493) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4282 (1023388584) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4283 (407114002) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4284 (3769922052) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4285 (1805259680) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4286 (189165963) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Illegal block #4287 (700103729) in inode 8.  CLEARED.
Too many illegal blocks in inode 8.
Clear inode<y>? yes


> Using it with my iBook on MacOS X is perfectly ok, but trying to use
> the drive connected to a USB 1.1 desktop (my main computer) under
> Linux also presented problems when copying a large file (one of
> Dijkstra's talks).
> 
	I've got it on USB 2.0.  I have a 1.1 port that I'll see whether I can
reproduce it on, once the fsck has finished!

> This error, differently from yours, was consistent and produced a lot
> of messages regarding the media of the "USB drive" being removed (!)
> from the system (while it obviously wasn't) and it left me with
> corrupted filesystems (I tried ext2/3, vfat and hfsplus, which are
> things that both MacOS X and Linux can read).
> 
	I'm not getting anything logged.

> I usually tried to use rsync to copy the files, but, if I remember
> correctly, the problem would also manifest when using plain cp.
> 
	I was also trying rsync, but am now restricting myself to cp to see if
that helped.  It didn't seem to.
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