Re: CompactFlash corruption and EWF

On 4 dec, 14:32, "lino" <pdematt...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
HiRob,
it seams to be correct as we experienced this behavior on a particular P/N
range while newer CFs work fine till now.
I'm happy to know someone can take more information than us from PQI!
Do you know how can I check the firmware? ... I have a tool but it reports
only FW v. 1.01 and nothing else.
Thank you in advance
Paolo.

"Rob" <Rob.Hulse...@xxxxxxxxxxx> ha scritto nel messaggionews:0a791a6f-bbf5-4ecf-8245-c7d4b4338702@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On Nov 27, 11:18 pm, Robert <Rob...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sorry, I don't have solutions to offer.

We are seeing similar issues - cards get randomly corrupted. We've not
yet
determined the cause (we've tried operating at low voltage levels with
power
cycling and so on and can't duplicate on the bench).

Today, I received a CF card from the field with corruption that prevents
XPE
booting (get the logo with the crawl and then a black screen).

The weird thing is that even though the EWF is enabled, it appears that
Windows is STILL WRITING log files. Am I seeing things?

There are several logs present with timestamps that correspond with the
suspected malfucntion time and these files have entries going back almost
two
months. Since the unit is powered down each day, I don't think we're
seeing
entries cached from past activities.

We are still using SP1.

This problem is eating our lunch (and a lot of other peoples' lunches as
well)... it would be nice if MS could provide some insight (given the
per-unit license fees that we're all paying).

Robert

"lino" wrote:
Hello,

I'm using 1GB PQI Industrial CF marked as fixed disk.
The CF is divided into three partitions:

1) C:, active primary, compressed NTFS, 220MB
2) D:, primary, NTFS, 9MB
3) R:, primary, NTFS, 769MB

The first partition holds the OS (XPe SP2 FP2007) and is EWF protected
(RAM-REG mode), the second one holds some persistent data and log files
and
the last one holds data-recording data.
Data-rate on disks D: and R: is low, let's say 10-20 kB/min.
The system works continuously, but it reboot at least once a week.

Randomly, after some time the system works, let's say after one or two
month, errors are reported writing data, for example "Windows was
enable to
save all the data for the file D:\$Mft". At this point, rebooting the
system, it become unusable as the CF get corrupted .... even the first
partition, protected by EWF and not involved in data-writing at all!!!
The
CF is unrecoverable, cannot be reformatted even with low level format
utilities.

Have someone experienced (and maybe solved) this?

Thank you.

Other info:
- PQI says this is due to the ECC (Error Correct Code) function that
marks
some physical blocks as bad
- PQI have found that these CF can be restored with some kind of
utility
they have (but they cannot deliver) and they are not really damaged
- this happens on 12 systems over 40 till now
- system is not stressed when errors are reported: CPU usage is 25% ,
physical memory available (40MB) and all disks have free space.- Hide
quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi all,

We're seeing similar problems with PQI disks - apparently random
corruption of
sectors on the disks. After having contacted PQI support, they replied
that certain
types of disk with firmware version "e" or "f" can develop this
problem. It can happen
when writing, but *ALSO* when reading (due to ECC). So EWF is not a
solution. The only
acceptable solution seems to be to replace the disk by a newer "g"
version which
doesn't have the issue. Or go back to NTe, which for some unknown
reason
works differently at IDE level. Firmware upgrades to "g" are not
possible.

Greetings,
Rob- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven -

- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht weergeven -

I see the firmware version during the BIOS startup, but only for a
split second.
When in XP, I can get the firmware version from Control Panel (->
System,
-> Hardware, then select the disk and view its properties).

Rob
.

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