You are talking about device deactivation, it occurs most offten with scsi drives that are not installed correctly (terminated)or are overheating or due to power supply problems, It will occur most when the server is under very heavy i/o action.  Also I would make sure that your are running lastest serve pack available.
Please explain your hardware, ie: scsi card etc.

You may have a problem with the underlying disk on the server. Novell has a small DOS partition and the large novell partition on the disk. Sound like you're HD is starting to give up the ghost. Have you run BINDFIX and VREPAIR? Do so *AFTER* making a *FULL* (bindery included) backup.

Get ready to replace the drive.

Error writing FAT table using ncopy  (Last modified: 09JAN1998)

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     Symptom

     Whenever he used ncopy to copy a number of files from a workstation to a server volume, he
     would get the following message on the server console after copying a few files.

     Message: "Error writing FAT table for volume <vol name>" and "2314: Error writing to file
     <name> data stream 0. Write was requested by user <name> on station <number>. File path
     <server/volume >."

     Troubleshooting

     Steps for troubleshooting:
     1 - Check the value of the Redirected Blocks for the hard drive in monitor. (This is one way to
     check for a bad hard drive.)
     2 - Recopy the SCSI driver from the install CD.
     3 - Comment out all unnecessary entries in the autoexec.ncf file. (Limit the amount of variables to
     deal with).
     4 - Confirm that interrupts 2, 9 and 15 are not being used.
     5 - Download and apply the latest OS patches and the latest disk and lan drivers.
     6 - Try performing the same operation with the copy command. (To make sure that it is not a
     problem with ncopy.exe).
     7 - Try copying to a different volume instead and/or try different files. (To make sure that it is not
     a problem with that one volume).
     8 - Use the tag_disable=ffff option when loading the SCSI drivers. (This applies only to Adaptec
     SCSI cards).
     9 - Check the cable and termination.
     10 - Swap out the SCSI card.
     11 - Add a secondary drive IDE and/or SCSI drive, create some volumes and see if the same
     problem occurs with them.

     Solution

     As one of the troubleshooting steps, he unplugged the SCSI cable and plugged it back in.
     Afterwards, the ncopy function worked properly and without errors.

                    Please select if this document solved your problem.

      Document Title:
                          Error writing FAT table using ncopy
      Document ID:
                          2922696
      Creation Date:
                          20MAR97
      Modified Date:
                          09JAN98
      Document Revision:
                          1
      Novell Product Class:
                          NetWare OS
      Novell Product and Version:
                          NetWare 4.11
                          intraNetWare for Small Business


     DISCLAIMER

     The Origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell. Novell makes all reasonable efforts to verify this
     information. However, the information provided in this document is for your information only. Novell makes no explicit
     or implied claims to the validity of this information.

     Any trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners. Consult your product manuals
     for complete trademark information.
       

Corrupt DS Database because of Drive Deact  (Last modified: 08JAN1998)

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     Symptom

     When booting up the server it tries to mount the SYS volume and reports an error writing to the
     FAT. Then the volume dismounts due to drive deactivation and the server can no longer see the
     disk device or any netware partitions until the server is rebooted. The customer said that the
     volume SYS was dismounting at about the same time DS was loading. We brought the server up
     with the -NDB and SYS mounted without any problems.

     Troubleshooting

     We used vrepair to repair the volume with the following options set: Write all fat entries to disk,
     Write all changes immediately to disk, purge deleted files. There were over 19,000 errors, and
     when I had him run vrepair a second time it came back with no errors.

     We downed the server and brought it back up again. DS still wouldn't load.

     We loaded dsrepair and tried to remove directory services. It reported errors, the drive
     deactivated, SYS dismounted, and dsrepair ended.

     We loaded install with the -DSREMOVE option, selected directory options, and remove directory
     services. It reported the same errors but successfully removed DS.

     We loaded partition manager, selected manage partitions, and deleted the server object.

     We loaded NWAdmin and deleted all of the unknown volume objects.

     We reinstalled DS on the server, added the replica back, downed the server and it came up
     normally

     Cause

     A corrupt local DS database was apparently causing the problem. It was corrupted by the drive
     deactivating.

     Drive is failing.

     Solution

     We vrepaired the volume until there were no errors, removed DS from the server and re-installed
     it again. The server remained stable after that.

                    Please select if this document solved your problem.

      Document Title:
                          Corrupt DS Database because of Drive Deact
      Document ID:
                          2929075
      Creation Date:
                          21AUG97
      Modified Date:
                          08JAN98
      Document Revision:
                          2
      Novell Product Class:
                          NetWare OS
      Novell Product and Version:
                          NetWare 4.1


     DISCLAIMER

     The Origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell. Novell makes all reasonable efforts to verify this
     information. However, the information provided in this document is for your information only. Novell makes no explicit
     or implied claims to the validity of this information.

     Any trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners. Consult your product manuals
     for complete trademark information.





         
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