On 06/20/2010 06:29 AM, Dave Ihnat was caught red-handed while writing:: > On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 12:00:59AM -0700, JD wrote: > > >> So, it is not clear that fsck will detect new >> bad blocks. >> > Man 'badblocks'. Note, from the manpage: > > "...it is strongly recommended that users not run badblocks directly, > but rather use the -c option of the e2fsck and mke2fs programs." > > >> I read about the old days when the drives did not do auto bad block >> forwarding (re-mapping). >> > I lived through "the old days". (Funny....they don't seem that far > back...) I still have a full-sized 5.25" drive in the basement...acting > as a doorstop. > > >> There was a low level formatter which actually detected the bad blocks >> and remapped them. Unfortunately for today, once the drive runs out of >> spare good blocks to forward bad blocks to, throw it away. I really >> wish there was such a low level formatter for today's drives. It would >> extend the life of a drive a little longer. >> > No, you don't. Having blocks spontaneously go bad, and having to scan > the system for them, was a Bad Thing(Tm). It took a lot of time--and > drives were far smaller than today. If you didn't catch 'em--and scans > were skipped often, because of the time required--you could suffer > unrecognized damage for a long time. > > At least, with internal drive intelligence, and S.M.A.R.T. (SMART) > reporting, you can run quitely and with a fair degree of comfort in the > probability that everything is being properly stored, with bad blocks > being detected and remapped without constant scanning on your part. > The fact that so many people, with operating systems of all kinds, > *don't* turn on SMART monitoring and can run for years without failure > says it is successful. > > The concomitant flip side is that when you finally *do* start seeing > SMART errors, you know that so many sectors have failed that it's filled > the reserve. This is cumulative--by the time this happens, there' no > real advantage in trying to 'low-level format'; it may never complete, > but even if it does, you've no confidence that it's going to remain in > service. SOMETHING was failing--either the controller electronics, or > the drive's recording surface. It's time to replace it. > > The bad news is that customers have rewarded drive vendors not for "fast, > big, and reliable", but "fast, big, and cheap". Drives generally fail > more often than you'd want. The good news is that "cheap" part--drives > that are stupidly big can be found for pennies on the gigabyte. 1TB > SATA for $64 (shopper.cnet.com). > > Hell, I remember in the early '80s--I was on contract at Bell > Telephone Laboratories in Naperville, IL. They had a **huge** > celebration--commemorative coffee mugs and other chachkes, cake and > coffee, at a big outdoor ceremony. What was the occasion? > > The data storage for the entire data center had just crossed the magic 1 > Terabyte limit... > > Cheers, > -- > Dave Ihnat > dihnat@xxxxxxxxxx > Well, I'm hoping that WD will send me a replacement. It's still under 3 years of age. Thanx, JD -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
