*BSD News Article 51661


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.uwa.edu.au!classic.iinet.com.au!news.uoregon.edu!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!zib-berlin.de!irz401!uriah.heep!not-for-mail
From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: Disk geometry yet again
Date: 18 Sep 1995 00:24:41 +0200
Organization: Private FreeBSD site, Dresden.
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <43i779$i9t@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <DEwGt0.E5w@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: uriah.heep.sax.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:6449 comp.periphs.scsi:37972

Richard Tobin <richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:

>- Is there any disadvantage to having partitions that don't start
>  on the (fictional) cylinder boundaries?

Nope, only the BIOS might care about this.

>A related question: years ago, when partitioning Sun SCSI disks, I
>remember leaving "spare" cylinders, presumably in case of disk errors.
>Everything I've heard since then implies that SCSI disks handle this
>automagically - can someone explain?

It _could_ handle it, but most drives don't do automatic bad sector
reassignment as shipped.  Run the command

scsi -f /dev/rsd0.ctl -P 3 -m 1 -e

as root, and set the following fields:

AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld):  1
ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld):  1
-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)