Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2017 18:19:54 -0700 From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> To: "Mikhail T." <mi+thun@aldan.algebra.com> Cc: freebsd-fs <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Low-level format an SATA-drive? Message-ID: <CANCZdfp1jGZyxmSamDdDURe%2Bzt-G-dijVfWwC9Hk8cd%2B39D65g@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <5b6394f6-1c0a-5b1e-bf5e-84e848905392@aldan.algebra.com> References: <5b6394f6-1c0a-5b1e-bf5e-84e848905392@aldan.algebra.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Mikhail T. <mi+thun@aldan.algebra.com> wrote: > It used to be, performing a "low-level format" could get a few more months > -- may be a year -- out of a failing drive. How would I try that today? > > The camcontrol has a "format" subcommand, but it just gives me an error: > > # camcontrol format /dev/ada3 > You are about to REMOVE ALL DATA from the following device: > camcontrol: scsiformat: error sending inquiry > > Is my drive simply beyond repair, or is camcontrol being "naive" in some > way? > I don't think that SATA support low level format. If it is spinning rust, then dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada3 bs=1m might do the trick. If it's an SSD, then maybe a secure erase will help. I say maybe in both cases because it's a crapshoot once drives get bad enough to start throwing bad sectors back to the OS. Modern HDD will remap bad sectors on rewrite, and doing a full write sequentially is a little nicer to some drives, but won't hurt. SSDs try very hard to get your data back, so if it's throwing errors and hasn't been through a 'shock event' (eg, baking in a datacenter in PR after the hurricanes hit for months), chances are very high that even a secure erase won't help much at all... Warner
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?CANCZdfp1jGZyxmSamDdDURe%2Bzt-G-dijVfWwC9Hk8cd%2B39D65g>