Advice for dealing with bad sectors on /

[Joseph D. Wagner]

> Getting errors similar to:
> 
> Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady
> SeekComplete Error }
> Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 {
> UncorrectableError },
> LBAsect=163423, high=0, low=163423, sector=163360
> Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:41 (hdb),
> sector
> 163360

This may not be the disk; it could also be the controller.  I've seen it go both ways.  Any problems on hda?

Try adding ide=nodma to the kernel parameters.  If the problem goes away, the problem is in the kernel driver for the controller or motherboard chipset.

> When I rebooted, the system threw me into a shell, to get me to "fix"
> things. So, I did an e2fsck -c -v /dev/hdb1 to attempt to fix things.
> The badblocks checking took 20 hours (it's a 200GB disk).  Then I went
> through the question/answer session, hoping to get through the problems...

A better way to go about this is booting off the rescue CD and doing the e2fsck scan there.  Otherwise, there could be leftover problems from running the scan off of the partition you are scanning.

> Some questions:

Best advice to all 3 questions: get some sort of disk imaging software.

The disk imaging software may copy the bad sectors (i.e. sectors marked bad now may also be marked bad on the new drive), but you can force e2fsck to rescan bad sectors.

Joseph D. Wagner