From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Dec 12 16:24:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id QAA09573 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 12 Dec 1997 16:24:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware) Received: from word.smith.net.au (ppp5.portal.net.au [202.12.71.105]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA09561 for ; Fri, 12 Dec 1997 16:24:40 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Received: from word (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA00479; Sat, 13 Dec 1997 10:49:03 +1030 (CST) Message-Id: <199712130019.KAA00479@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: "Josu Jos Souza Jr." cc: Bruce Evans , freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Bad144 In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 12 Dec 1997 09:08:54 -0200." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 10:49:02 +1030 From: Mike Smith Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by hub.freebsd.org id QAA09567 Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > bad144 is normally only used for old MFM and ESDI drives, since modern > > drives remap bad blocks themself so that they appear to haeve 0 bad > > blocks. Perhaps the slice size is wrong. > > Is it safe to install the FreeBSD without using bad144 to scan the drive? > What I mean is: does FreeBSD 2.2.5 uses ATA's bios capability of mapping > bad blocks? There is no "ATA's bios capability of mapping bad blocks", so FreeBSD could not possibly use it. The firmware on most decent modern disks of all sorts (even the Zip, if you want to believe it) will perform automatic reallocation of bad disk areas. If you have a disk manufactured in the last 4-5 years that is generating media errors it is because it has *run*out* of spare sectors, or a large amount of layout data has been lost. In this case you may be able to recover the disk with a vendor-specific repair program, but generally the best course of action is to dump the unit. Unless you are using an ancient disk, *do*not* use bad144. mike