Re: Linux 2.6.3-rc3 - IDE DMA errors on Thinkpad A30

Chip Salzenberg
2004-02-16T04:08:19Z

According to Jeff Garzik:
> Other equally smart people argue that modern IDE disks reserve space for
> remapping bad sectors. If you run out of sectors that the drive is
> willing to silently remap for you, you should toss the disk and buy a
> new one.

OK, I get the theory. But AFAICT this drive hasn't remapped *any*
sectors. Yet. (Which would not be impossible; it's a relatively
new drive, a few months old at most.) Quoting smartctl:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 3
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

This seems to suggest that there are three *candidate* sectors with
reallocation pending, none of which have actually been remapped (yet).
If so, drive replacement would perhaps be premature.

I suppose it's time to read up on the details of the SMART spec.
--
Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <chip@pobox.com>
"I wanted to play hopscotch with the impenetrable mystery of existence,
but he stepped in a wormhole and had to go in early." // MST3K