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Recently my laptop IO became deadly slow. I investigated a bit, and according to smartmon tools I have no errors on the disk, tough I'm getting a lot of errors in the syslog:

ata2.00: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x90800 action 0xe frozen
ata2.00: SError: { HostInt PHYRdyChg 10B8B }
ata2.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE
ata2.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 pio 512 in
         res 40/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x54 (ATA bus error)
ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
ata2.00: hard resetting link
ata2.01: hard resetting link
ata2.00: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata2.01: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata2: EH complete

How do I check if the culprit is the disk or instead the SATA controller? The HDD is not so hi level, 5400rpm, but since the last 6/12 months it has slowed down a lot, it spins a lot and at times it's completely busy so I cannot do anything on the OS for 2, 4 or more minutes until it finishes some IO tasks I still have to identify.

In summary, how can I check what's going wrong? thanks

1 Answer 1

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Put it in another computer and get manufacturer test sute, it mostly comes as bootable disk from their website. Do the test, full test and it will tell you if your disk is bad or not. Do it in another computer to eliminate any other variables (SATA controller, cables, power).

If your disk is fine, start eliminating other possible problems on your computer.

What this test does it runs standard S.M.A.R.T. tests and figures out if disk parameters are within defined range.

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  • Thanks but I already ran SMART tests and the all ended without errors. If the manufacturer utility does the same then what's the purpose? Just to test the disk on another hardware?
    – Maxxer
    Oct 19, 2014 at 21:56
  • Unless you test it on another machine, you can only guess what the problem is. Make sure not to use same cabling and power supply. And manufacturer test is the most reliable, we used it to approve RMA in our shop and Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung always sent a new one, no questions asked, so it is accurate. Oct 19, 2014 at 21:57

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