Hard disk sad?

[Glen C]

At 01:57 PM Monday 27/01/2003, Michael Still wrote:

>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
><snip>

G'day Mikal,
    the -vw options to badblocks seems reasonably comprehensive - slow 
and  destroys all data though.
Cheers
Glen