Filesystems, Disks and Memory

I had an issue with a second hard disk in my machine. I have a sparc station running solaris 7. It was working fine but now it wont mount on boot up and when you try to mount it manually it gives an I/O error. I tried a different disk as a control which was fine. What I want to know is if my corrupt disk is salvagable. When I try to format it (or run a probe-scsi command from the prom monitor prompt) it recognises that a disk exists but none of its detail and so asks me for input regarding the number of cylinders, heads ...etc.Even then it wont format it and gives the following error to the console window. Is there any hope for this disk or is there any way to analyse what caused the problem in the first place.

14:20:10 m1f526 unix: WARNING: /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@4,0 (sd4): Nov 4 14:20:10 m1f526 Error for Command: load/start/stop Error Level: Retryable Nov 4 14:20:10 m1f526 unix: Requested Block: 0 Error Block: 0 Nov 4 14:20:10 m1f526 unix: Vendor: IBM Serial Number: AK0M8545 Nov 4 14:20:10 m1f526 unix: Sense Key: Not Ready Nov 4 14:20:10 m1f526 unix: ASC: 0x4 (LUN not ready), ASCQ: 0x0, FRU: 0x0 Nov 4 14:20:15 m1f526 unix: WARNING: /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@4,0 (sd4): Nov 4 14:20:15 m1f526 Error for Command: load/start/stop Error Level: Retryable Nov 4 14:20:15 m1f526 unix: Requested Block: 0 Error Block: 0 Nov 4 14:20:15 m1f526 unix: Vendor: IBM Serial Number: AK0M8545 Nov 4 14:20:15 m1f526 unix: Sense Key: Not Ready Nov 4 14:20:15 m1f526 unix: ASC: 0x4 (LUN not ready), ASCQ: 0x0, FRU: 0x0 Nov 4 14:20:31 m1f526 unix: WARNING: /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@4,0 (sd4): Nov 4 14:20:31 m1f526 Error for Command: load/start/stop Error Level: Retryable Nov 4 14:20:31 m1f526 unix: Requested Block: 0 Error Block: 0 Nov 4 14:20:31 m1f526 unix: Vendor: IBM Serial Number: AK0M8545 Nov 4 14:20:31 m1f526 unix: Sense Key: Not Ready Nov 4 14:20:31 m1f526 unix: ASC: 0x4 (LUN not ready), ASCQ: 0x0, FRU: 0x0

Any thoughts would be much appreciated

Since you attempted a format, I assume that you don't care about the data on the disk. In that case, I certainly would throw it away. The danger is that you might get it working and then store good data on it and then have it break again.

Thanks for the reply but what I am trying to get at is what is the source of the problem and can it be troubleshooted. I am not too concerned with the disk subsequently failing.

Basically what I am trying to get at is

(a) What exactly does this error message tell me about the source of the problem as it doesn't say much to me.
(b) What possible remedys are there that can be tried
(c) If there aren't the tools within Solaris to troubleshoot the device is there 3rd party software that can help.

Diag tools for SUN hardware:

SunVTS
Sun Explorer Data Collector

(These may or may not work due to this may be an old system (you mentioned it was a sparc - that could mean anything but the older servers used that name more than the newer ones - sparc 4, sparc 10, ....)

There are other tools which your Sun Field Engineer will have. The error message really does not tell you much except that the system does not see the drive once booted. There are test at the boot prompt you could run - check on SunSolve for further information (
SunSolve

It may just be a loose connection on the drive - reseat the drive or connector. If that doesn't work, replace the drive.