badblocks

[The Small Box Admin]

I've found that on modern drives, once you start getting bad blocks
the end is near for the drive.  I've even read that smartctl isn't a
good predictor of failure.  There was a Google study on drive failure
that reported this, though at the time I read it I questioned some of
the conclusions.

It's not like the good old days with MFM and RLL drives where you
could do a low level format if you started getting soft or even hard
errors.  The low level format would remap the bad blocks and you'd be
back in business.

As for a suggestion, if you want to proceed with the suspect drive, I
would get the manufacturers utility do do a low level fromat or test.
That is if the manufacturer has the utilities, you didn't indicate
drive manufacturer, type or model.

Ken

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Michael Hipp<Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
> Anyone use 'badblocks' regularly?
>
> If I have a suspect disk and want a go/no-go decision on whether it is a
> keeper, will it it give me that? What args would you give it?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
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The Small Box Admin
http://smallboxadmin.blogspot.com