Today I had the misfortune of trying to remotely format and setup a backup to a WD USB My Book drive. Everything appeared to go fine until I actually tried to use the drive. When I did, I would invariably receive a “Buffer I/O error”.
In fact, as I attempt to reformat the drive several times, I would occasionally receive this error during the format.
Each time, I was attempting to format the drive using ext3 (I planned to use the drive for Amanda vtapes). The last time, I deleted and recreated the partition and reformatted the drive using ext2. I also decided to wait some time, thinking perhaps the changes needed to be flushed. This time, it worked. So is it ext2 or the fact that I waited?
UPDATE: Well, that didn’t work. Ext2 took longer before it started receiving the I/O errors, but it did eventually receive them. I even copied a 4GB file to the drive without issue. But as soon as I attempted to create the virtual tape directories via Zmanda, the files system got hosed. Frustrating …
UPDATE: It looks like I have the following bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/88746
The server is running an older version of CentOS (4.4). While the bug above is for Ubuntu–it pertains to the kernel and it appears I may still be on a problematic kernel version. Onto seeing what version the latest CentOS uses and recommending an upgrade of the OS. Things are working now at USB 1.1 speeds–ick.
UPDATE: While I still think I have the above bug, the work-arounds appear to not work for me. Any ideas would be welcome.