on Sun, Oct 20, 2002, Burkhard Ritter (burkhard@sportident.de) wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I have roasted a harddisk. Now if I do a fsck, I get I/O-errors for
> some blocks. I have marked all this blocks as bad-blacks. I still get
> the errors, but not for specific blocks. Do you think I can use this
> hd as the destroyed area is marked as bad-blocks and should not be
> used? Are there other possibilities to "repair" the disk?
Though I generally agree with the sentiment that storage media which
exhibit *any* signs of flakiness should be RMAd post haste, there are
some possible rescue/recovery methods. They *mostly* apply to *newer*
disks, which show up suspect:
- Check your hdparm settings. Several of these can conflict with
hardware preferences. I mostly view hdparm as deep black arts, so
inquire elsewhere for what to try.
- For newer (e.g.: Maxtor 133), use an add-on 133 PCI-IDE controller.
This plugs into one of your PCI slots, and may function better with
the drive. We revived one brand-new system at work this way, no
further errors in three months of heavy use.
- Motherboard clock speed. The boss swears he once cleared up drive
errors (CRC redundancy check) by _over_clocking his motherboard one
notch. Again, heavy juju, but a possible last-ditch method.
In general, I'd ***STRONGLY*** recommend you try to get a bitwise image
of any suspect media as soon as it starts showing any signs of flakiness
-- 'dd' it to a new drive. And revisit your backup and recovery
strategy.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
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