[Tfug] USB, again

[Jim Secan]

OK, I've now had a second USB drive go south on me, suddenly erupting in a
rash of errors of the variety:

Jul  7 23:19:30 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 34233727 
Jul  7 23:20:10 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 149422903 
Jul  7 23:20:18 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 149422911 

(taken from the logwatch file).  This is exactly the same behavior noted in
another drive a few weeks back.  I tried wiping the filesystem off the
first drive to show this behavior, and that didn't solve anything (and lost
me all the data on the drive).  I've been using a rotating set of USB
drives for nightly backups since December, and now I find that it's an
unstable arrangement.  At this point, I don't know if this is a problem in
hardware (probably not the drives, not with two drive of different types
going south, maybe the USB ports?) or in my FC3 installation (I'm running
the 2.6.11-1.27 kernel).

One note - I'm running a "one back" kernel because the newest one available
(1.35) crashed when I disconnected a powered-down (and unmounted) USB drive
from one of these ports.  Is this telling me that there may be a problem
with the ports?

Jim
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