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My machine one day started inconsistently to fail to boot. I found that Grub was (sometimes) unable to load either the kernel or the ramdisk (it said "out of Disk"). It got to the point where I could only boot with the Grub command line and attempt to load them manually - after serveral failed attempts, it eventually succeeded.

In my kernel logs, I found numerous "ATA bus error"s, and noticed that the disk was operating at ATA 33 instead of ATA 133. I did a full check of the disk (using the vendors bootable tool) and it came up clean (despite very large numbers of 'seek errors' - seems those are normal for my disk!).

I wasted a heap of time looking for Grub bugs and worrying about hardware failures when eventually I noticed a suggestion to check the cables....

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In the end, it seems it was cables.

Following the suggestion in a bug report, I changed the SATA cable, used a different SATA power plug from my power supply (insufficient power is a possible culprit), and made sure the SATA cable wasn't near any other power cables (possible electical interference from other, especially power, cables).

It works fine now.

I've since put the original SATA cable back in, and it still works. I'll switch power cables soon, and try dangling the SATA cable near other power cables... Likely the SATA cable was either dislodged or a bad connection developed due to humidity or some such.

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  • Please accept your own answer in that case so that the question is closed and it remains a useful reference for future readers :)
    – ish
    May 30, 2012 at 10:16

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