Bad sector

[jdow]

From: "J.L. Coenders" <fedora at universalgrid.nl>
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> Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>> J.L. Coenders wrote:
>>> Dear list,
>>>
>>> I have a problem.
>>> Smartd reports that I have bad sectors on my disk. I have tried
> checking it
>>> with badblocks which also reports bad sectors.
>>> I believe I have heard it is possible to repair this in a software
> manner. Is
>>> this true, or do I need to buy a new disk?
>>>
>>> Btw, fsck does not report any problems.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Jeroen
>>>
>> You may want to use hdparm and see if the on-drive defect management
>> feature is turned on. (-D option) If it is not, turn it on and let
>> the drive remap the bad sector. If it is already turned on, then you
>> should start looking for a new drive. If the drive has used up all
>> the spare sectors, then it is probably failing.
>>
>> I have run into a few drives that do not seam to remap some bad
>> sectors until you run the manufacturer's drive test on them. You can
>> usualy download this from their web site. You can also download the
>> Ultimate Boot CD, boot from the CD, and select the correct test for
>> your drive. (It also has a lot of other nice tools on it.)
>>
>> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
>>
>> Mikkel
> Thank you for this. I was just running a Ultimate Boot CD test on the
> drive. The errors do not show up the manufacturers diagnostic tool,
> Maxtor.

Color me paranoid. It'd be a good idea to create that backup, anyway.
It might not be as urgent a problem, though.

{o.o}