Undefined disk error

[gumse]

3 or 4 times now i have encountered a really brutal sound from my disk drive , like sand in a drink blender or something...

In the system.log it says:
Apr 14 22:32:59 localhost mach_kernel: disk1s9: 0x8 (UNDEFINED).

It seems that it's triggered when i run Explorer.

Any ideas ?

 

[Mars]

Okay...

I now have two machines that falter on this 0x8 (UNDEFINED) error:

a Blue & White G3 that crashes randomly; the system log will sometimes reflect the 0x8 error; after numerous HD drive reformats and a HD drive replacement, I believe the culprit is a faulty logic board...

a PowerBook G3 (Bronze KB) that hangs indefinately at OS X boot on the happy Mac gray screen with a spinning rainbow cursor; booting in verbose mode, the machine gets caught in a loop of getty returned to many response, sleeping errors; performing a fsck in single-user mode yields two 0x8 (UNDEFINED) errors and then a can't find sibling error that makes fsck quit without fixing anything

Any idea what these 0x8 (UNDEFINED) errors are? Is this a general I/O error, or indicative of something specific?

Suggestions are much appreciated...
Mars

 

[gumse]

Long time since i posted the first post. It was a defective IBM-disk , got it replaced, I still had some warranty left.

 

[edX]

well, i don't know anything about code errors and such, but i know that the most common cause of scratching noises from the HD is file fragmentation. the cure is to defragment the drive using a third part utility. My suspicians that this is is your culprit are supported by this happening while running a browser which does lots of adding and deleting of files in its cache. if this is the only place you get the problem, a quick and dirty solution might be to just clear your cache. but eventually the problem will resurface. (ok, it wil resurface if you defragment, but not as quickly)

 

[Mars]

The weird thing is that I replaced the HD in the B&W G3 and still got the error. That G3 is usless right now.

I'm a bit concerned that the PowerBook may follow the same fate...you give me hope...

So goes life with modern technology

 

[edX]

er... i still stand behind checking out file fragmentation whenever you hear scratching/screeching noises from your drive.

 

[homer]

I nominate that you give yourself another title, Ed: Official Defragmentation Evangelist.

"Machine won't boot, you say? Defrag!"

Just kidding. It sounds like good advice.

 

[Mars]

I am not experiencing any abnormal noises on either of those machines...just the 0x8 (UNDEFINED) errors.

I can only guess that the 0x8 error is a general low-level I/O error that fataly interupts the kernel process, causing crashy crashy.

 

[Mars]

Both of those Hard Drives ended up being faulty.

One of them catastrophically failed recently...and those errors finally stopped with the installation of a new HD.

The other seems to have a faulty ATA controller on the logic board.

By best guess at this point...those 0x8 (UNDEFINED) errors errors mean unrecoverable mechanical failure within the disk drive/controller hardware.