From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Feb 18 14: 2: 7 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0992837B401 for ; Tue, 18 Feb 2003 14:02:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from lurza.secnetix.de (lurza.secnetix.de [212.66.1.130]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A01143F3F for ; Tue, 18 Feb 2003 14:02:05 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from olli@lurza.secnetix.de) Received: from lurza.secnetix.de (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by lurza.secnetix.de (8.12.6/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h1IM23dK031888 for ; Tue, 18 Feb 2003 23:02:03 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from oliver.fromme@secnetix.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by lurza.secnetix.de (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id h1IM23LE031887; Tue, 18 Feb 2003 23:02:03 +0100 (CET) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 23:02:03 +0100 (CET) Message-Id: <200302182202.h1IM23LE031887@lurza.secnetix.de> From: Oliver Fromme To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: badblocks? In-Reply-To: <87n0ktlesz.fsf@strauser.com> X-Newsgroups: list.freebsd-stable User-Agent: tin/1.5.4-20000523 ("1959") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.7-RELEASE (i386)) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Kirk Strauser wrote: > If the drive is newer (and has automatic remapping), then > the situation is probably even worse. New drives allocate a certain > percentage of space to handle the problem. If you're starting to see error, > then the spare space has already been used up, and the drive is probably > dying rapidly. Not necessarily. The automatic remapping can only take place when the drive knows the correct contents of the sector in question. This is only the case if the sector is being written to, or if the firmware was able to recover the contents using ECC. But if an un-recoverable read error is detected, the drive cannot automatically remap the sector. Therefore, if a drive reports read errors, this does NOT necessarily mean that it has run out of spare sectors. It doesn't even have to die anytime soon (but of course it's possible). Also see my other message in this thread. Regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. "All that we see or seem is just a dream within a dream" (E. A. Poe) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message