Re: OT: IDE/Bad Blocks: Call for mental assistance
On Sun, 13 Jul 2003, martin f krafft wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Over the past year, I have replaced something around 20 IDE
> Harddrives in 5 different computers running Debian because of drive
> faults. I know about IDE and that it's "consumer quality" and no
> more, but it can't be the case that the failure rate is that high.
>
> The drives are mostly made by IBM/Hitachi, and they run 24/7, as the
> machines in question are either routers, firewalls, or servers.
throw those ( deskstar?? ) drives away if it's made in hungry or thailand
> then ran
> `badblocks -svw` on the disk. And usually, I'd see a number of bad
> blocks, usually in excess of 100.
running badblocks does NOT prove that the disk is bad ...
- i didn't look at the code, but if badblock bypasses the
normal ide interface/system calls, than it's result is worthless
if it writes directly to the disk interface
( it should tell you the same list of badblocks the manufacturer
( already coded into their disk controller's eproms
- if badblock acts like anyother user app, than there should
be zero badblocks
- ibm and every disk manufacturer have their own "disk testor"
to test their drives ( mostly windoze based )
c ya
alvin
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