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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.bc.net!info.ucla.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!goldenapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!fas-news.harvard.edu!giffin.student.harvard.edu!user From: daniel@eecs.harvard.edu (Daniel B Giffin) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: how to recover from bad blocks? Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 16:20:32 -0500 Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Lines: 39 Message-ID: <daniel-0703971620320001@giffin.student.harvard.edu> References: <daniel-0603970043260001@giffin.student.harvard.edu> <5foe9p$jri$1@easystreet03> NNTP-Posting-Host: giffin.student.harvard.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:36706 In article <5foe9p$jri$1@easystreet03>, tedm@agora.rdrop.com (Ted Mittelstaedt) wrote: > If the disk develops bad spots after the system has been running a > while, your screwed. Fixing it involves wiping the disk, running the > bad144 scanner to create the bad block list, writing the bad block list > to the disk, then reinstalling FreeBSD. Then you restore from your > backups that you presumably made. Thank you so much for clearing this up. Now I understand where I stand. If you could clarify a few details, however -- What do you mean by "wipe"? Fdisk from the fixit disk? And then how do I write the bad block list to the disk? If possible, could you give me the actual commands? > Based in the description of your problem, it sounds more likely that > the disk didn't sustain physical damage, but rather that the additional > memory somehow caused something to scribble all over the filesystem > data structures on the disk. By any chance, was the additional ram > non-parity? Urm, not sure. Likely this will happen again when I reinstall? Or spontaneously later? > ... Unix doesen't have that great disk data recovery tools because the > idea is that your going to be making continual backups of your Unix > system, the way to fix a troubled Unix disk is to reformat and recreate > the filesystem, not go in there with scandisk or whatever and attempt > to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It's unfortunate that this > can sometimes be a painful lesson to a newbie. Yeah, i am a bit of a newbie, but fortunately began doing backups quite recently. Close one, that. I appreciate all the help. daniel