On Tuesday 05 May 2009 12:11:49 L. V. Lammert wrote: > At 05:45 PM 5/4/2009 -0500, Tony Abernethy wrote: > >There is, in the e2fsprogs package, something called badblocks. > >I have used it (on Linux) to "rescue" bad disks. > >(Windows laptops -- kinda redundant?) > > Interesting, .. it DNB on 4.0, however, .. and I'm unsure as to any issues > between utilities designed for ext2 and ffs??? > > >If you care about your data, follow Steve's advice. > > Right. How many disks should I throw away before trying to gather some > USEFUL data?
Perhaps I didn't word my thoughts well enough, and appeared snarky to you? That wasn't my intent. Disks today are 1) VASTLY cheaper per meg of storage, 2) Faster, 3) less power comsumptive and noisy. But there is also 4) which is they aren't built as well. The MTBF figures are a mathmatical fantasy, and dangerously worthless. I have many older systems running "small" disks from 2G to about 20G that are still fine since 1996. In fact, looking at my log of disk disasters, I've had three disks blow up when being used by my users, when they were using those machines. In contrast, the 60G+ disk era has given me at least 12 problems in the last four to five years, and I'm not counting friends systems that I've helped out on. Probably more like 18 disasters+ if I count those. Because of this I've adopted a really careful attitude about disks in general. I'm not starting to treat them like airplane parts--replace them before they fail. This is especially true for laptop disks (I've had four disks start to go on various OpenBSD thinkpads I've had). When you have free time you can beat on a disk, and take weeks pounding on it. Look at iogen in the ports tree as another testing method. It is also the case that multiple make builds of userland is a good test. I'm hesitant to depend on the smart tools, because I've had laptop disks that failed hours after a check said things were fine, and I still have a 100G disk generates smart errors but which is absolutely good. Remember too that getting a disk replacement under warranty almost always results in a "recertified" disk, and I'm nervous about using them. Given the cost I get new ones. Hannah's comment that I should have used the raw device was quite correct; that was a tyop so it should have said dd if=/dev/rsd1c of=/dev/null bs=64k > > >Me, if I want to rely on a disk drive, I will run badblocks on it. > > Sounds like the best idea - do you run it from a Linux CD, or ?? > > Thanks! > > Lee --STeve Andre'
