can I mark sectors as bad?

["Captain Weenie" <weenie@cybercede.net>]

Anyone familiar with the workings of the file system:

 I assume the hard drive is flaking out - but the error is mostly the same - a
power cycle gets things running again without error.

I am getting the following error -

wdc0:0:0: not ready, st=0xfe, err=0x00
wdc0 channel 0: reset failed for drive 0
wd0a: device timeout writing fsbn 968608 of 968608-968623 (wd0 bn 968671; cn
960 tn 15 sn 46), retrying

...
and so it goes but the st=0xfe, err=0x00
changes to
st=0xde, err=0x00

,,,

and this just repeats over and over - system seems completely locked up - I
pull the plug (ouch) - give her juice again - and she complains momentarily
about the filesystem not being properly unmounted - but then comes up clean.

while performing an fsck -f -v (and several other times on its own) the wd0a
times out - but then recovers reporting soft error (corrected)
that error most recently looked like this:

wd0(wdc0:0:0): timeout
            type: ata
            c_bcount: 8192
            c_skip: 0
wd0a:  device timeout reading fsbn 750400 of 750400-750415 (wd0 bn 750463; cn
744 tn 8 sn 7), retrying
wd0: soft error(corrected)

the fsck does not show any troubles - unless 639 frags is an issue.

this was a system that I threw up quickly to get a job done - so the entire
filesystem is mounted on /
I do usually break out more mount points - I don't know if that could be an
issue here or not.

I haven't rebuilt the kernel on this - so there hasn't been an opportunity for
any bad magic.

I plan on getting some other boxen up to replace this one - but I'm hoping
there is something I can do to prolong the life of this beast of burden.

Any way to mark sectors as off limits or something?

I loaded this system on that fateful night at the end of last month - it was
late night on the 30th that I pulled this system's OS down off of the Canadian
FTP server - I'll be posting a question about anoncvs on the misc list if
anyone is interested in following.  I felt this issue was of a more technical
nature - and more suiting for this list.

I haven't posted to this list before - so if this is OT please use a lighter
as opposed to a flame thrower.

    Danke,

            Capt. Weenie