186 lines
6.5 KiB
HTML
186 lines
6.5 KiB
HTML
<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
|
||
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
|
||
<html><head>
|
||
<META NAME="generator" CONTENT="lgazmail v1.1pre9c">
|
||
<TITLE>The Answer Guy 31:
|
||
Bad Cluster
|
||
</TITLE>
|
||
<!-- ORIGINAL SUBJECT:
|
||
Bad Cluster
|
||
JTD SUBTITLE:
|
||
|
||
-->
|
||
</head>
|
||
|
||
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#A000A0"
|
||
ALINK="#FF0000">
|
||
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
|
||
</H4>
|
||
<P> <hr> <P>
|
||
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
|
||
<H1 align="center"><A NAME="answer">
|
||
<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
|
||
<a href="./index.html">The Answer Guy</a>
|
||
<img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
|
||
</A></H1>
|
||
<BR>
|
||
<H4 align="center">By James T. Dennis,
|
||
<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</a>
|
||
<BR>Starshine Technical Services, <A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A>
|
||
</H4>
|
||
<p><hr><p>
|
||
<!--endcut ========================================================= -->
|
||
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)"width="50" height="28"
|
||
align="left" border="0">Bad Cluster </H3>
|
||
<p><strong>From Ron Bautista on 13 Jul 1998
|
||
in the</strong>
|
||
<a href="news:comp.unix.questions">comp.unix.questions</a>
|
||
<strong>newsgroup</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<!-- begin body -->
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>Hi..
|
||
</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>I have a
|
||
<a href="http://www.toshiba.com/">toshiba</a> laptop...1.2gig. has like 10
|
||
bad cluster. Do I have to say goodbye to this one, and buy a new one If
|
||
not--- what software or downloadable app can I get to get it fix.... I would
|
||
very much appreciate your help.
|
||
</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<p><strong>
|
||
Thank you,
|
||
Ron Bautista
|
||
</strong></p>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)" width="50" height="28" border="0" lign="bottom"
|
||
>I thought I answered this awhile ago. But I don't find it
|
||
in my archives and I do find it in my inbox. So,
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
You usually can't "fix" bad clusters --- though you can
|
||
instruct your OS to "map them out" (refuse to use them).
|
||
There used to be a software package for MS-DOS called
|
||
Spinrite (Gibson Software?) which would do surface analysis
|
||
of many types of drives and might be able to restore
|
||
bad clusters to use (although it was never recommended).
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
There used to also be procedures for many ST-506 (MFM and RLL)
|
||
hard drives and some SCSI drives which would allow the
|
||
user to do a "low level format" of the drive. However with
|
||
modern IDE and SCSI drives this option is generally unavailable
|
||
--- some drives will let you sent the low-level format command
|
||
to them, and their electronics will blithely ignore your command
|
||
and send a "success" signal back (I've even heard that some will
|
||
use a suitable delay factor).
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
The point is that modern drives are much more sophisticated than
|
||
the old ST-506 drives. Their electronics usually already
|
||
manage a number of extra blocks per track (cylinder) and
|
||
automatically map the extra blocks into use. Thus you usually
|
||
don't see any bad blocks on a modern drive until you have enough
|
||
errors on some of the tracks that the are no extras for them.
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
Thus, when you see "10" back blocks on a drive, it might be that
|
||
there are many more that have been automatically mapped out by
|
||
the drives electronics (and are thus not visible to the OS, even
|
||
at the device driver layer).
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
For using such a drive with Linux you simply use the
|
||
-c option to '<tt>mke2fs</tt>' when you make (format) new filesystems.
|
||
This will call the '<tt>badblocks</tt>' program and make the
|
||
appropriate adjustments to the filesystems tables. I think
|
||
these adjustments amount to permanently marking those blocks
|
||
as unavailable by adding them to a special 'inode' that's
|
||
maintained by the fs --- they'll never appear in the free list.
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
To add more/new bad blocks you can use the <tt>-c</tt> option to
|
||
<tt>e2fsck</tt>. You can also run '<tt>badblocks</tt>' by hand, save it's
|
||
output/report to a file, and use that as input to e2fsk's
|
||
<tt>-l</tt> switch.
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
||
That's about all there is to say about bad blocks under Linux.
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
|
||
<blockquote>Obviously you want to maintain good backup procedures
|
||
--- and knowing that you have bad blocks on this drive
|
||
may encourage you to be extra careful about your data
|
||
on that system.
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<!-- end body -->
|
||
|
||
<!--================================================================-->
|
||
<P> <hr> <P>
|
||
<H5 align="center"><a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
|
||
>Copyright ©</a> 1998, James T. Dennis <BR>
|
||
Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 31 August 1998</H5>
|
||
<P> <hr> <P>
|
||
<!--================================================================-->
|
||
<table width="98%"><tr valign="center" align="center">
|
||
<td rowspan="3"><A HREF="./lg_answer31.html"><IMG
|
||
SRC="../gx/dennis/answernew.gif"
|
||
ALT="[ Answer Guy Index ]"></A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_backup.html">backup</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_uidgid.html">uidgid</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_connect.html">connect</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_95slow.html">95slow</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_badblock.html">badblock</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_trident.html">trident</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_sound.html">sound</A></td>
|
||
|
||
</tr><tr valign="center" align="center">
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_kernel.html">kernel</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_solprint.html">solprint</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_idescsi.html">idescsi</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_distrib.html">distrib</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_modem.html">modem</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_NDS.html">NDS</a></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_rpm.html">rpm</A></td>
|
||
|
||
</tr><tr valign="center" align="center">
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_guy.html">guy</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_maildns.html">maildns</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_memleak.html">memleak</a></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_multihead.html">multihead</A></td>
|
||
<td><A HREF="tag_cdr.html">cdr</A></td>
|
||
</tr></table>
|
||
<P> <hr> <P>
|
||
<!--================================================================-->
|
||
<A HREF="./index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif"
|
||
ALT="[ Table Of Contents ]"></A>
|
||
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
|
||
ALT="[ Front Page ]"></A>
|
||
<A HREF="lg_bytes31.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif"
|
||
ALT="[ Previous Section ]"></A>
|
||
<A HREF="./searls.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif"
|
||
ALT="[ Next Section ]"></A>
|
||
<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html>
|
||
<!--endcut ========================================================= -->
|
||
|
||
|