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Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!xanth!ukma!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!rutgers!gatech!gt-eedsp!emory!skeeve!bagend!jan
From: jan@bagend.UUCP (Jan Isley)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att
Subject: questions about bad blocks
Keywords: hard disk, bad blocks, formatting
Message-ID: <732@bagend.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 89 04:19:19 GMT
Distribution: unix-pc
Organization: Disorganization Limited, Marietta, GA
Lines: 43

I was formatting a disk Monday and when it finished formatting, it 
announced that the drive had 14 entries in the bad block table.
This was *before* the media test was run and I did not enter any
bad blocks before I formatted the drive ... fresh out of the box.

What gives?  How does it know that there are bad blocks before the
surface test is run?

Exactly where is the bad block table and how do I edit/delete it?

How can I add drives to the list on the diagnostics disk?

Lenny, your list is different than the 3.51 list ... anyone got 
the source code?

After I ran the surface test and loaded the foundation set, I ran

	iv -s /dev/rfp000

I have never had a problem doing this before, but this made the 
system crash every time.

And on the subject of bad blocks: I know, we just went through part
of this recently but we did not finish it...
When you get something like this in /usr/adm/unix.log:

	drv:0 part:2 blk:43763 rpts:1 Tue Jan 24 16:15:32 1989
	drv:0 part:2 blk:43763 rpts:1 Tue Jan 24 16:35:02 1989
	drv:0 part:2 blk:43763 rpts:2 Tue Jan 24 16:38:47 1989
	drv:0 part:2 blk:43763 rpts:1 Tue Jan 24 16:43:12 1989

Is this a bad block looking for a place to happen?  Yea, I know you can
use the recently posted blockfind to find the offending file.  But, do
you panic immediately, find the file, copy it, add the bad block to the
table, delete the old file and fsck the disk, .... or what?
Do you do this on the first offense you notice?  Or do you wait for
*possible* problems later?

Okay, I'll shut up now.
-- 
---
Jan Isley, follower of Zen, picker of nit
jan@bagend | {backbones}!gatech!bagend!jan | (404) 434-1335