Undefined disk error

gumse

Member
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 ?
 
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 :)
 
Long time since i posted the first post. It was a defective IBM-disk , got it replaced, I still had some warranty left.
 
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)
 
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 :rolleyes:
 
er... i still stand behind checking out file fragmentation whenever you hear scratching/screeching noises from your drive.;)
 
I nominate that you give yourself another title, Ed: Official Defragmentation Evangelist. ;)

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

Just kidding. :D It sounds like good advice. :)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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