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From: bdale@winfree.UUCP (Bdale Garbee)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: bad blocks on hard disk
Message-ID: <87@winfree.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 17:03:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: winfree.87
Posted: Tue Sep  8 17:03:31 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 17:03:41 EDT
References: <196@turbo.RAY.COM> <489@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Reply-To: bdale@winfree.UUCP (Bdale Garbee)
Organization: Bdale's Berkeley Box, Colorado Springs
Lines: 19

Hmmm.  I'm under the impression that trying to allocate some set of
reserved sectors as replacements for bad sectors is not a good thing.  The
scheme I had in mind was simply to create a (preferably hiden) file 
somewhere on the drive, and allocate all of the bad blocks to it.  The
way to do this would be to write a program that does a non-destructive
test of each sector on the disk, and allocates any baddies found to the
bad blocks file, along with reporting any relevant stats on the block to
the console.  I'd call the program "scrub" if I were writing it  :-)

Advantage of this is that it works, the filesystem code doesn't need to be
changed (I don't think), it's fairly simple to implement, and you always
have use of all the good sectors on your disk... none need be "reserved".

I'll get around to this someday.  If someone needs it sooner... go for it!
-- 
Bdale Garbee, N3EUA		phone: 303/593-9828 h, 303/590-2868 w
uucp: {bellcore,crash,hp-lsd,ncc,pitt,usafa,vixie}!winfree!bdale
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fido: sysop of 128/19		packet: n3eua @ k0hoa, Colorado Springs