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

[Chip Salzenberg <chip@pobox.com>]

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