Hard disk sad?

[Peter Ortner]

Michael Still wrote:

> 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?
>

I assume you have an IBM HDD. If you visit the Hitachi site at
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd, you will be able to download the Drive
Fitness tool. You can use this to read the SMART status off the drive, to
confirm that your drive has indeed had a hard time in the past. There are
various facilities available to repair damage, as well. You may also wish to
get the Drive Feature tool, so you can also check drive temperature :), and
play around with all the features IBM supply.

As far as I am aware, the DFT will actually mask out the dodgy sectors, so
that they no longer have an address. This seems to be (reasonably)
permanent. It might be preferable to do this, as you may forget to do a bad
block check in future if you do a reinstall.

You can install SMART monitoring tools, so that you get a little more warning
of potential issues occurring in future. Check
here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/

Note that I've never been in the position of having a HDD "degrade
gracefully", so YMMV.  Don't forget to back up before stuffing around with
the IBM/Hitachi supplied software.

Good luck :)