[asterisk-users] Asterisk Server : IDE HDD frequent crash

[Dushyanth]

Hey guys,

Iam having a peculiar problem with my asterisk installation. The specs 
are..

[root at pbx ~]# asterisk -V
Asterisk 1.2.7.1

Wildcard: Digium Wildcard TE110P T1/E1
Wildcard TDM: Wildcard TDM400P REV I (4 modules) ( 2 FXO, 2 FXS)
Wildcard TDM: Wildcard TDM400P REV I (4 modules) ( 1 FXO, 3 FXS)
Wildcard TDM: Wildcard TDM2400P Prototype (24 modules) (12 FXO's - rest 
empty)

Total 15 FX0's, 5 FXS out of which 5 to 6 FXO/FXS are being used. We have 
about 300 active SIP accounts. 

Queues, SIP extensions, Agents are in MySQL database using asterisk 
realtime static.

CPU : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.06GHz with Hyper threading
RAM : 1G
Mobo : Intel SE7501HG2

The system is stable, however, the IDE disk crashes every 3/4 months. There 
are DMA timeout errors for the IDE disk before it fails completely. The 
same issue occured for the past three disks and I was doubting the 
recommended hdparm setting 

'hdparm -d 1 -X udma2 -c 3 /dev/IDE Device'

So, I removed this setting after the last crash and the system workd fine 
for another 3 months. Yes'day, the disk failed again with same symptoms. 
All the disks were seagate baraccuda IDE drives.

zttool doesnt show any IRQ misses even without the above hdparm setting and
there is no noticeable problem in asterisk with the PRI line etc. Below is 
my /proc/interrupts as well as /dev/hda settings.

[root at pbx ~]# cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0       CPU1
  0:   24771857   24719039    IO-APIC-edge  timer
  1:        102         62    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
  8:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
  9:          0          0   IO-APIC-level  acpi
 14:     134159     135915    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
185:   32988610   16463264   IO-APIC-level  wctdm
193:   22173177   27275710   IO-APIC-level  wctdm
201:   21737611   27711650   IO-APIC-level  wctdm24xxp
209:   22038077   27401613   IO-APIC-level  wcte11xp
225:   18992311          0   IO-APIC-level  eth1
233:        117    1166879   IO-APIC-level  eth0
NMI:          0          0
LOC:   49493157   49493156
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

[root at pbx ~]# hdparm -i /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

 Model=ST340014A, FwRev=3.06, SerialNo=5JX96VFV
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78165360
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2:

 * signifies the current active mode

I looked at the mailing lists and couldnt any such issues reported. 

Please advice. Should i be using SCSI disks on RAID 1 or something ? Will 
that help ?

Also, should i be looking at any other mobo then Intel SE7501HG2 ? Iam 
planning to put in a another asterisk server as a failover and would 
appreciate inputs abt the kind of hardware i should be using for the system 
with the specs i mentioned.

Thanks
Dushyanth