Hard disk sad?

[Michael Still]

Hey,

with both 2.5 and 2.4.18, I get error messages along the lines of:

hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 {UncorrectableError}, LBAsect = 17199206, sector
= 17199199

My googling indicates this is probably a bad block on my hard disk. My
questions therefore are:

 - is this a sign of a disk on the way out?
 - is there any way to correct this apart from a low level format of the
disk?
 - is there a linuxy way of doing such a format, or should I download the
IBM thingie to do it (I know that some distro installs prompt for "check
for bad blocks", are we talking about the same thing here?)
 - am I cursed?

Yours in disk painedness,
Mikal

-- 

Michael Still (mikal at stillhq.com) | Stage 1: Steal underpants
http://www.stillhq.com            | Stage 2: ????
UTC + 11                          | Stage 3: Profit