Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:26:55 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA? Message-ID: <20091116012655.b5bdf80b.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <42307.1258330015@tristatelogic.com> References: <42307.1258330015@tristatelogic.com>
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On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:06:55 -0800, "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote: > So, the question is, should I: > > 1) RMA the drive back to Seagate? Yes. > 2) Somehow try to lock-out the bad sector(s)? (If so, how?) > [...] > If it was failing all over the place (and on multiple blocks), then yea, > sure, I'd RMA it back to Seagate in a heartbeat. But heck! It's only one > sector. And what's one sector between friends? If there's already error messaging to the OS, then the drive's firmware has noticed that it can't compensate errors anymore. This means: Probably there isn't only one bad sector - there are lots of them. (The drive uses spare sectors to move data to them when a sector in use gets bad.) Backup all your important data and get rid of this drive, this will save you possibly upcoming trouble. > Before posting this, I googled around a bit for the crrent Accepted Wisdom > regarding such sitiations. Most seems to say that bad blocks (even one?) > are an early warning of impending doom (for the drive), and suggest trashing > or RMA'ing the drive. I just sorta wanted to know if folks here would agree > or disagree with that. >From my knowledge and experience, this is correct. > One thing concerns me about the thought of RMA'ing the drive back... The > last time I RMA'd a drive (years ago & a different brand) I got back as a > replacement a ``refurb'' drive. Hummm. If I RMA this drive, it is possible > that Seagate would replace it with a refurb whose remaining life may perhaps > prove to be even less than the drive I am RMA'ing? Do Seagate RMA drive > replacements come with fresh platters? There's always smartctl (from port smartmontools) to do some checking on the drive you get back. > P.S. If I _do_ end up RMA'ing the thing back, do I need to worry about > scrubing the drive squeaky clean first... you know... using one of these > multiple write-over progs (like `wipe') if I am paranoid... as I am... > about the possibility of old credit card numbers lying around in unallocated > sectors on the drive? (The drive is empty _now_, but earlier it was in > serious/heavy use.) You could first mount all the partitions (from a live CD or DVD) of the disk and then to the magical "remark read-file" command (rm -rf /), and afterwards running dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1m for a while. Check that ad0 really is the drive you want to clean, or else. :-) > I guess what I'm asking is: Do Segate and the other manufacturers care > enough about their customer's privacy to securely wipe old drives/platters > that come in to them for RMA? Or do I need to worry 'bout that for my own > self? I've got no experience with how Seagate treats his customers. To be sure, at least clean your disk a bit as mentioned above, because that's for YOUR security. If Seagate is "intelligent" enough to send you a "new" drive back with a FAT or NTFS file system on it... you'll delete it anyway. Help the manufacturer - help you. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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