Notice
Please scroll down for the answer (it has few points but it is the correct one). The problem is solved by a patch that will be in kernel 3.12.7 and up; I hope it will back-ported to earlier ones, too.
My laptop is a Samsung Chronos serie s 7. Ubuntu Gnome Remix 13.04, with Intel updated drivers.
I have a problem with the internal SSD drive (8G capacity). It fails with COMRESET and input/output errors. I am quite convinced that the problem is hardware; unfortunately I do not have Windows installed in the laptop to check if it's a matter of SSD configuration or whatever.
The problem is that the disk is recognized by udev:
KERNEL[9.515930] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/ata2/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0/block/sdb (block)
ACTION=add
DEVNAME=sdb
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/ata2/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0/block/sdb
DEVTYPE=disk
MAJOR=8
MINOR=16
SEQNUM=1785
SUBSYSTEM=block
UDEV_LOG=3
and after that it fails in a lot of checks, delaying boot, delaying shutdown, and making (I think) suspend impossible.
Is it possible to tell Linux to completely ignore anything on the ata2 link? I tried adding this line to /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="pci" DRIVERS=="ahci" KERNELS=="ata2" OPTIONS=="ignore_device"
but it doesn't work.
On the other hand, if anyone knows how to reset the SSD if it was left in "cache" mode without using Windows... or to boot a "live" windows to do the same...
Thanks!
Data added:
Full udevadm info -a -n /dev/sdb pasted to http://paste.ubuntu.com/6186145/
smartctl -i /dev/sdb -T permissive gives:
root@samsung-romano:/home/romano# smartctl -i /dev/sdb -T permissive
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.8.0-31-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
Vendor: /1:0:0:0
Product:
User Capacity: 600,332,565,813,390,450 bytes [600 PB]
Logical block size: 774843950 bytes
>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page
which is clearly wrong. Nevertheless:
root@samsung-romano:/home/romano# fdisk -b 512 -C 970 -H 256 -S 63 /dev/sdb
fdisk: unable to read /dev/sdb: Input/output error
(SSD data from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1935699&p=11739579#post11739579 ).
ADDITIONAL THOUGHT:
Could all this being a side effect of the Intel Smart Response Technology not being disabled before installing Linux? If yes, how can I check it short of reinstalling a windows on the machine? Or this is a shot in the dark? (In the bios the SSD drive doesn't show and there is nothing about Intel SRT).
ABOUT MARKING AS DUPLICATE:
I changed the title of the question; I do not think that the linked question answers my problem. I positively know that the SSD is failing. I am asking if it's possible to tell the linux kernel to not probe for it at all.
