[sllug-members]: fsck and bad sector list

[Allen Parker]

On 12/12/06, James Helsby <cyanics at xmission.com> wrote:
> In response:
> The drive is about 6 months old. There were no physical problems with
> it, nor were there any mechanical / magnetic problems.
>
> What happened, was just like I explained. When fsck saw bad data sectors
> (not bad physical sectors) it wrote those sectors to the bad-block list.
> The ending result was that I lost a shlew of data (corruptions) and the
> sectors the data resided on.
>
> However, I am pleased that after 3 days I was able to figure it out. I
> ended up using a program call HDAT2 in boot mode, to 1) error check the
> physical disk. 2) wipe the physical disk. 3) move the last address (LBA)
> down by 5. 4) move the LBA up by 5. 5) Wipe again
>
> The result, was that the 250 is back sane. Currently formating it with
> helix, and will be putting it back into production in a few minutes.
>
> Saved.
>
> JH.
>
> Don Flemming wrote:
> > My first suggestion is to run an anti virus scan off a safe boot
> > disk.There are older binary virus's that specifically rewrite your bad
> > sector table but I haven't heard of anyone encountering these in a few
> > years. Then  ask yourself how old is the harddrive? Maxtors are
> > somewhat known for sudden failures like that and typically after three
> > years. fsck (filesystem check) appears to rebuild your bad sector
> > table, it may simply have found your drive about to die. I look
> > forward to what you find out.

This is why we have smartmontools.

> > Don
> > */James Helsby <cyanics at xmission.com>/* wrote:
> >
> >     All,
> >
> >     I have a 250Gb HD, which was reporting file corruption. As a
> >     result, I
> >     ran an fsck.ext3 -f -y /dev/sdb1 (the device) on it, which
> >     resulted in
> >     me loosing 150 of the 250 GB of space. For some reason, the fsck
> >     decided
> >     that everything was bad-sector, and added it to the bad-sector list.
> >
> >     Here is the problem. I still need the drive. I know that there are no
> >     physical problems with the disk, and it has since be physically
> >     scanned
> >     for magnetic defects, and low-level formatted. However, both of these
> >     actions have not cleared the bad-sector list.
> >
> >     Anyone on the list know how to clear a bad-sector list? It is a
> >     Maxtor
> >     DiamondMax 10 (pata133). The system I run it on is Ubuntu 6.10.
> >
> >     Cheers
> >     JH.
> >
> >

Smart monitoring works, and has let me know about dying WD disks
months in advance.