Subj : Re: bad sectors
To   : comp.os.linux
From : Stuart Fuller
Date : Tue Oct 19 2004 11:25 pm

erik wrote:

 
> Correct. Use 'smart' technology to see what is really happening. Drives
> automatically remap bad sectors. If you start to see bad sectors, the
> drive already ran out of its spares... Disaster is lurking...

Not necessarily.  Consider the case where the drive is commanded to read a 
block, but there are errors in that block that prevent the drive from 
obtaining a successful read.  Yes, it is quite appropriate to revector the 
bad block to a spare, but what of the current outstanding read that the 
user (operating system)is patiently waiting for?  In this case, the drive 
has no choice but to return a read error to the user (operating system).  
The drive has not necessarily ran out of spare blocks, but it needs to 
return a read error.

-- 

        Stu

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