bad blocks

[James Wilkinson]

jludwig wrote:
> Newer drive automatically replace bad sectors with spares that are
> included on the drive.

But they only do this when you WRITE to the sector. You don't want
the middle of an important file to be silently replaced by zeros.

> If you are seeing bad sectors this means one of two issues.
> 
> 1) A virus (not likely)
> 
> 2) Drive failure.
> 
3) You need to force the filesystem to re-write the file in question.
(Sometimes, this is easier said than done, I know).

> If the drive is failing get your data off now (only allow the drive to
> run - spin up - while removing data).

Well, that's always good advice with a suspect drive...

James.

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