*BSD News Article 74062


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: IDE disk scan for bad sectors
Date: 17 Jul 1996 21:09:39 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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emerys@confucius.omniscient.com (Sean Emery) wrote:

> Sounds like EIDE disks don't automatically take care of themselves in
> the event of bad sectors, so I prefer to take the preemptive approach.

It's supposed to.  If you see bad sectors, it's usually since the
drive's bad sector table is full.

You might have some luck with low-level reformatting, but this
requires some special utility.  (The old ST-506 command does only null
out the sectors on IDE.)  This way, the bad-sector tables will be
re-arranged from scratch, so if only some portion of your disk was
affected, you will get it into a normal life.

Both bad144 and badsect aren't very excellent tools, to say it gently.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)