2

I have a desktop computer which frustrated me for years (literally, 4 years) because somehow the installation of any distros didn't work, it had a some "ata" error during the boot process after 30 or so seconds. I already understood that it must have been an issue with one of the SATA drives (it has 8 drives in it).

I was frustrated but never enough to really work on it since I have another desktop, another laptop, it was just a frustrating windows machine with network shares sitting in a corner.

Today I got some vacation, so I decided to "troubleshoot" it finally. I wanted to unplug each SATA drive one by one and try to boot on my USB key.
What do you know, I just unplug the old DVD drive, and it the key boots. Years of frustration, years of sheer laziness. One SATA cable.

So obviously that DVD drive was what caused the errors, but how can there be sector errors on a DVD drive ?

Just to satisfy my curiosity, would someone know what that problem was ?

PS: I don't even know if I should ask the question here since it's "fixed".

4
  • Still, someone might have a good explanation for it, let's wait and see, seems to be an interesting problem
    – rlam12
    Apr 25, 2016 at 20:57
  • If this is a hardware problem, this should me migrated to Super User.
    – muru
    Apr 25, 2016 at 21:05
  • 3
    You would need to include in your question exactly what the errors are for any hope at an answer... any attempt to answer otherwise would be guessing.
    – psusi
    Apr 25, 2016 at 22:18
  • 2
    We really cannot help you without the exact error. Why not plug the drive back in, try again, write the error down, and then edit your question. Once you've done that use the 'flag' option underneath the question to ask for it to be reopened.
    – Seth
    Apr 25, 2016 at 23:03

0

Browse other questions tagged .