[TriLUG] hard drive errors & fsck

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 17:02, Doug Kojetin wrote:
> 
> Is there anyway to "fix" the blocks ... or at least flag them
> so they aren't used?  This was on my root directory ... 

I'm pretty sure ext2/ext3 filesystems do this automatically... when you
run the "badblocks" check, it should make a note of the bad blocks and
avoid using them in the future.  

However, if your hard drive has a lot of bad blocks (or even just a
few), that's a bad sign -- it might be planning on crashing soon.  I
would suggest figuring out the manufacturer of the drive, and
downloading the manufacgturer's diagnostic tools.  (IBM makes great diag
tools for their drives for example -- look for the "Linux" version and
you'll get a nice bootable floppy.)  If the drive is still under
warranty, hopefully the diagnostic tools will give you enough ammunition
to get a replacement.

If the drive is out of warranty but still seems to be bad -- don't
despair, large hard drives are cheap these days!

--Jeremy