From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Nov 24 10:20:10 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id KAA11452 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 24 Nov 1995 10:20:10 -0800 Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id KAA11441 for ; Fri, 24 Nov 1995 10:20:05 -0800 Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id LAA09932; Fri, 24 Nov 1995 11:15:13 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199511241815.LAA09932@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Help! I got a bad block.... To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 1995 11:15:13 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <199511230216.CAA27652@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Nov 23, 95 02:16:13 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1367 Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > If the replacement sectors are otherwise exposed as usable data sectors, > > turning it on would be Bad(tm) if you have already stored data on the > > drive. > > I don't _think_ anyone would be that stupid. I see you've never owned a WD1007 ESDI controller. 8-). > > If the replacement sectors are not otherwise exposed as usable data > > sectors, having it off at all is silly. > > See above. Your point is arguably valid. I don't buy the "on a bad day argument". I can't see how a good sector could be incorrectly marked bad, unless you have the driver cooperate in the marking and blow the driver programming. Either way, you'll eat the spare sectors while testing. I believe you can clear the sectors that have been remapped in any case by issuing SCSI commands. If nothing else, you can re low-level format the drive. So the people at risk are driver writers, and the inconvenience is only high if they write their drivers using large drive. 8-). I think that the device ought to have an "implied" media perfection layer that causes the remapping to be turned on by default when FreeBSD is installed. Hell, I think it ought to be turned on when Win95 is installed (it isn't, in case you were wondering). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.