Re: 'let the hdd remap the bad blocks'

[Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>]

Matthias Andree wrote:

>Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>Just taking a guess, many hard drives have difficult and time-consuming
>>procedures that they can go through to read a troublesome block.  These
>>can take 20-30 seconds.  Probably if they have to go through these
>>procedures, once they finally succeed the smart vendors remap the block.
>>    
>>
>
>They should try to rewrite and write verify the block before remapping
>it, as there is only a finite amount of spares.
>
>For SCSI drives, there's also Jörg Schilling's "sformat" tool that can
>do the "badblocks" stuff directly in the drive rather than through all
>the kernel buffers, and can also refresh or reassign bad blocks.
>
>  
>

Vitaly, take a look at that.  Part of a good user interface is letting 
users know what tools are available.  Remember, most users will 
encounter a failing drive and/or fsck on a journaling fs as a rare and 
stressful event in their lives, so it is good to educate them with URLs 
and other references at the time they run fsck.