Re: can I mark sectors as bad?

[tedu <grendel@zeitbombe.org>]

On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Captain Weenie wrote:

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

It is.  Probably the motor, and rebooting gives is chance to try again.
It's not dead yet, but likely on the way.

> 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.

If you give it some more time, you'll get control back.  The kernel is
waiting on the disk, which is acting really slow, so it appears there's
nothing happening.  The motors are having trouble positioning the drive
correctly.

> 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?

Not really.  Modern drives are supposed to do that by themselves.  Your
drive is dying.  It sounds more like it's the motor and moving parts than
the disk surface which has gone bad.  So it's not some sectors, it's
everything.

I've had an identical experience to yours.  In my case, it was a laptop
and the problem appeared one day.  What a racket the drive made as it
spun, it clicked and clacked, and generally howled like a banshee.  As I
was considering what to do about it, the problem stopped.  Something must
have been out of alignment, but it's better now.  Unfortunately, I don't
think that "magic self-repair" is a common occurence.

Future reference: this is a misc@ issue.


--
Mediocrity is a sin.