From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 16 13:34:59 2003 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 7733237B401 for ; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:34:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mta06-svc.ntlworld.com (mta06-svc.ntlworld.com [62.253.162.46]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3686E43FBD for ; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:34:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from scott@fishballoon.org) Received: from llama.fishballoon.org ([81.104.195.199]) by mta06-svc.ntlworld.comESMTP <20030716203456.BIZZ16215.mta06-svc.ntlworld.com@llama.fishballoon.org>; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:34:56 +0100 Received: from scott by llama.fishballoon.org with local (Exim 4.20) id 19csya-000Q0F-FC; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:34:12 +0100 Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:34:12 +0100 From: Scott Mitchell To: "akanwar@digitarchy.com" Message-ID: <20030716203412.GI96366@llama.fishballoon.org> References: <4910-220037316185551393@M2W085.mail2web.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4910-220037316185551393@M2W085.mail2web.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386 Sender: Scott Mitchell cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: how to check for bad blocks on IDE 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: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 20:34:59 -0000 On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 02:55:51PM -0400, akanwar@digitarchy.com wrote: > Hi all, > > Is there a way in freebsd to check for bad blocks. Linux can do this via a > -c flag to mkfs; but newfs for FreeBSD does not seem to have this > functionality. > > The issue is that I have a IDE disk that I suspect to be bad )but there > have been no ATA resets or logged errors so far). I either need to do a bad > block check while creating a filesystem or some other diagnostic tool that > can do a low level check on the disk. > > Thanks, > -ansh Hi, Probably the best thing to do is download the disk manufacturer's diagnostic program (usually some kind of bootable floppy image) and run that against the drive. Modern drives do bad block mapping internally, so you won't see any errors until the drive has run out of spare blocks -- at this point you replace the drive and hope your backups are in good shape :-) My understanding is that SMART is supposed to help you out here by giving you some advance warning of drive problems, before the thing completely stops working. I've never actually seen this happen with any drive on any OS, however. Anyone know of any FreeBSD-friendly SMART diagnostic tools? Scott