I recently upgraded to debian etch and my sole means of backup, an HP M820 external CD writer (SCSI/pcmcia) no longer works as reliably as it used to. The wodim cdrecord replacement hangs just before it says "fixating" .. and eventually barfs a million error messages before croaking on a "segfault". I have a feeling this has nothing to do with pcmcia or scsi configuration .. or an (always possible) bug in wodim that would affect just my particular hardware .. but rather this may be a symptom of this 5-year old device gently dying on me. Is there any way I could confirm this before I replace it? Do CD writers just die and you have to buy another one .. or is there ways to give them a second life? Thanks, cga

cga2000 staggered into the Black Sun and said: > my sole means of backup, an HP M820 external CD writer (SCSI/pcmcia) > no longer works as reliably as it used to. The wodim cdrecord > replacement hangs just before it says "fixating" .. and eventually > barfs a million error messages Install cdrecord (or growisofs) and try that, just to make sure it's not a hardware problem. Joerg keeps saying wodim has bugs. He might have a point there. > I have a feeling this has nothing to do with pcmcia or scsi > configuration, or a bug in wodim that would affect just my particular > hardware, but [is] a symptom of this 5-year old device gently dying. > Is there any way I could confirm this before I replace it? See above, and take a look at dmesg's output. You *might* see sensible error messages if this is an actual SCSI device and you have verbose SCSI error reporting turned on. If it's IDE or USB, the odds of sensible error messages go down, but you might see something useful in the dump. > Do CD writers just die and [then] you have to buy another one, or > [are] there ways to give them a second life? This depends on what exactly has failed. Certain problems can apparently be fixed by fiddling with the laser power level, but problems with the mechanical parts typically mean it's time to replace the drive. The last CD-RW drive that died on me (2.5 years after the warranty expired, much longer than any other CD-RW I'd owned, yay Plextor) displayed complete and total catatonia. YDriveMV. -- The squirrels now live in fear of the magic exploding compost heap. --Dan Holdsworth Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 01:44:36 GMT, Dances With Crows <danSPANceswithTRAPcrows@gmail.com> wrote: > cga2000 staggered into the Black Sun and said: >> my sole means of backup, an HP M820 external CD writer (SCSI/pcmcia) >> no longer works as reliably as it used to. The wodim cdrecord >> replacement hangs just before it says "fixating" .. and eventually >> barfs a million error messages > > Install cdrecord (or growisofs) and try that, just to make sure it's not > a hardware problem. Joerg keeps saying wodim has bugs. He might > have a point there. I was going to try that.. after I remembered some rather heated exchanges between Joerg and the debian-user crowd. But actually, since I don't believe in magic, it turns out that I had upgraded by installing debian etch on different partitions and kept my old sarge handy just in case. So I rebooted my old sarge system where the HP M820 worked w/o problems and tried to write the same iso file I was trying to write via wodim to a CD-R with the old cderecord from 2-3 year ago and got exactly the same result. Now I know that this used to work and I can't thing of anything that might have changed on this old system. So after running this test, I thought I wouldn't bother installing Joerg's version. Although, come to think of it, I might get better support from him than I did on the debian lists. >> I have a feeling this has nothing to do with pcmcia or scsi >> configuration, or a bug in wodim that would affect just my particular >> hardware, but [is] a symptom of this 5-year old device gently dying. >> Is there any way I could confirm this before I replace it? > > See above, and take a look at dmesg's output. You *might* see > sensible error messages if this is an actual SCSI device It definitely is. I get all the scsi messages and sense codes .. but when the problem occurs all I get is a hang and /var/log/messages has this: Oct 28 22:09:59 turki kernel: [ 703.061864] sr 1:0:4:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery Oct 28 22:10:01 turki kernel: [ 704.834626] wodim[5560]: segfault at bf56efdc eip b7e305b9 esp bf56efb8 error 6 If I have the time next weekend, maybe I should look for a scsi manual with all the sense codes. > and you have verbose SCSI error reporting turned on. I'll read the man page and see how I can activate more verbose messaging. > If it's IDE or USB, the odds of sensible error messages go down, but > you might see something useful in the dump. >> Do CD writers just die and [then] you have to buy another one, or >> [are] there ways to give them a second life? > > This depends on what exactly has failed. I'd bet on the "laser" .. i.e. I was experiencing problems with it over the last month or so .. and eventually was able to write a mountable/usable copy of the latest xubuntu by blowing canned air and (later) applying rubbing alcohol at what looks to be the "lens". But this is pure speculation .. what kinda bothers me is that I would have expected this type of component to just die and never come back. Here, I get the OPC message .. fine .. then wodim/cdrecord write for quite a while -- I think something like 750KB/s or thereabout .. and I'm looking at over 500MB .. fine again .. everything appear to be working .. And it's right at the end .. when it should perform the "fixating" part of the operation that it borks. Makes me think of a surgeon having successfully performed his 7th appendectomy of the day suddenly dying of a massive heart attack just when he's about to sew his patient back up. > Certain problems can apparently be fixed by fiddling with the laser > power level, The device appears to get his power off of his own little P.U. connected to the same outlet as the laptop. And power seems to be pretty stable in my area. > but problems with the mechanical parts It does appear to be noisier than it used to be. Like it's humming when it comes up while booting. But then you get used to these things anyway .. so I'm not even sure. > typically mean it's time to replace the drive. I have seen some bare drives that supposedly are compatible with this old laptop -- IDE .. better than this pcmcia/scsi contraption, perhaps? The trouble is that I would need a caddy to plug them into the laptop and these appear to be rather hard to find. > The last CD-RW drive that died on me (2.5 years after the warranty > expired, much longer than any other CD-RW I'd owned, yay Plextor) > displayed complete and total catatonia. YDriveMV. A sensible solution would probably be to setup a desktop/server machine with a DVD writer (the ~700MB limitation is quite a pain when your partitions are some 3-4GB)and have it backup the laptop remotely. Considering I paid something like $300.00 for this HP M820 5-6 years ago and that scsi over pcmcia strikes me as rather complicated I have a feeling it may not be worth investigating further. Thanks much for your comments. cga