HSM violation

[Tony Alfrey]

Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> Anyone here know how to translate ATA errors?  My wife's laptop spewed
> the following about 24 hours ago, although it seems to be
> asymptomatic:
> 
> ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
> ata2.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 cdb 0x0 data 0
>          res 51/20:03:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x3 (HSM violation)
> ata2: soft resetting port
> ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
> ata2: EH pending after completion, repeating EH (cnt=4)
> ata2: EH complete
> 
> 
> This is from a 2.6.23.x kernel.
> 

A Google search on SATA hard drive HSM violation gives many hits on 
exactly this error message, often on kernels newer than 2.6.18, with 
inconsistent random solutions (fsck, bad sectors, bad controller, 
mumbling about possible kernel bugs) but several indicate disk firmware 
problems (some specifically on Western Digital drives, but also seen on 
Seagate Barracuda).

-- 
Tony Alfrey
tonyalfrey at earthlink.net
"I'd Rather Be Sailing"