Disk got a bad block; what now?

[Bob Hemus]

Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> 
> It's been a very long time since this happened to me,
> but my root partition seems to have come down with a case of
> bad block in the inode table.  SCSI drive, too, though
> a bit old (not sure, maybe 7 years; its 4GB).
> 
> Fsck indicates the files affected aren't too numerous or
> critical, they are
>    /root/.cpan/sources/authors
>    /var/webmin/miniserv.pid
>    /var/webmin/sessiondb.pag
>    /var/webmin/sessiondb.dir
> 
> I can live without these, or rebuild them, or reload them.
> Whatever.
> 
> I've used 'cp -a' to move my root partition to another drive,
> and things are running happily.  Now I would like to reclaim
> that partition.  Is there a recommended incantation for getting
> that block into the bad blocks table without formatting the
> whole bloody thing?  Should I just try writing on it and
> hope it doesn't sin any more?  Should I worry about the
> whole drive going bad?
> 
> ++ kevin
> 
> --
> Kevin O'Gorman  (805) 650-6274  mailto:kevin at kosmanor.com
> Permanent e-mail forwarder:  mailto:Kevin.O'Gorman.64 at Alum.Dartmouth.org
> At school: mailto:kogorman at cs.ucsb.edu
> Web: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~kogorman/index.html
> Web: http://kosmanor.com/~kevin/index.html
> 
> "Life is short; eat dessert first!"

My brother-in-law gave me a 8.4 gig Western Digital drive with a (some?)
bad blocks and a Quick Install disk that came with it.  I ran the Data
Lifeguard program on the floppy and it "fixed" it.  I have been using it
about a year, now.  I haven't noticed any problems.  I probably don't
get to play with mine as much as some of the rest of you.  My wife has a
long honeydo list that cuts into my play time.  Is there a similar
program offered by your drive's manufacturer?
Bob
-- 
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well,
than a fool can see from a mountain top.
				Unknown