From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 1 00:34:40 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D20F16A4CE for ; Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:34:40 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ren.sasknow.com (ren.sasknow.com [207.195.92.131]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F35143D2D for ; Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:34:40 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Received: from hsdbsk69-11-17-34.sasknet.sk.ca (hsdbsk69-11-17-34.sasknet.sk.ca [69.11.17.34]) by ren.sasknow.com (8.12.9p2/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i610YY01002018; Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:34:34 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:35:22 -0600 (CST) From: Ryan Thompson To: Tuc In-Reply-To: <200406302200.i5UM0tdv073144@himinbjorg.tucs-beachin-obx-house.com> Message-ID: <20040630182527.D615@localhost.my.domain> References: <200406302200.i5UM0tdv073144@himinbjorg.tucs-beachin-obx-house.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Disk about to fail X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:34:40 -0000 Tuc wrote to freebsd-questions@freebsd.org: > Hi, > > Looks like my disk is about to fail YET AGAIN on my laptop : > > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=25937067 > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=25937067 > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=25937067 > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=25937067 > > > The last 2 times however I found it was the /var partition, I > newfs'd it again, it happened again, re-newfs'd it, now its happening again. > How do I find out whats stored at that LBA, and either fix it, or do something > so it doesn't use that block or any bad block anymore? /var is typically quite a volatile filesystem; many reads/writes; usually nothing stays for long. If you're getting those errors, it means the failure is occurring in a portion of the disk you're actually using. (i.e., blocks that are actually allocated to files). Try a recursive grep of the entire filesystem and see which file(s) croak as unreadable. :-) Once, I had this happen, and actually found a 50MB file that was using the bad region of the disk. The file wasn't essential to anything, so I left it there. The rest of the disk still works fine. Needless to say, I don't trust it very much, but at least the immediate problem is confined. If the bad space *isn't* actually used by a file, it's a bit tricker. If you really want to track it down in that case, you could try filling up your disk with files some multiple of blocksize and read them back in, until you either get a hard error, or a consistency failure. Then, delete all of the files that you created, except for the one(s) spanning the bad blocks. Note that *none* of these strategies are recommended where any data that you care about is concerned. Best? Get your data off the disk *yesterday*, in descending priority order, and use the platters for wind chimes. - Ryan -- Ryan Thompson SaskNow Technologies - http://www.sasknow.com 901-1st Avenue North - Saskatoon, SK - S7K 1Y4 Tel: 306-664-3600 Fax: 306-244-7037 Saskatoon Toll-Free: 877-727-5669 (877-SASKNOW) North America