Mike Meyer wrote:
Modern drives deal with bad block substitution all by themselves.
Umm - not quite, right? That is, if a block "goes bad" and you get a read error, the drive isn't going to do any "substituting" at that point. You'll just continue to get the read error if you try to access (read) that block. It's only when you allow another *write* to that block (e.g. by deleting the original file and writing new files) that the drive will automatically substitute a spare block for the one that went bad.
By the time you've got blocks going bad that the OS sees, the drive is in really sad shape. You should replace it with a new drive ASAP.
If, after you have (for certain!) overwritten the bad block(s) and you still get errors, then yes the drive is on its way out. But simply getting a read error (without any overwrite attempt) from a block or two doesn't necessarily mean that the drive is turning to mush, now does it?
Gary
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