From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 27 12:59:24 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 9877D16A4B3 for ; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:59:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com [66.30.200.37]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EF8A543FE5 for ; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:59:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 6BD1D3B05; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 15:59:23 -0500 (EST) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <020701c39c50$00f4b620$8201100a@yugovostok.transtk.ru> <44fzhewz65.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> <3F9D6614.6040009@whatistruth.net> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 27 Oct 2003 15:59:23 -0500 In-Reply-To: <3F9D6614.6040009@whatistruth.net> Message-ID: <448yn69z2s.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 19 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Subject: Re: hard disk problem 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: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:59:24 -0000 DavidB writes: > you probably have a couple bad blocks on the harddrive, which happens > over time, you need to scan and repair the harddrive. If the bad > blocks reappear rather frequently then you know that the disk will > fail in the near future. Correct. Assuming the hard disk was built in the 1980s. If it's more recent, then it almost certainly does internal bad-block remapping on its own. That means that if bad blocks are becoming visible to the operating system, the disk has hundreds or thousands of bad sectors, and is on its way to the grave. This would be more serious if the errors were occurring on writes rather than reads, but there has already been data lost, and some of the data on the disk is known to be corrupted. If the original poster has a hard disk that predates the 486 chip, then I apologize for having given a possibly incorrect answer.