Can't I get a /dev/one?

[William M. Quarles]

> William M. Quarles is having problems with a hard disk drive.
> 
> Mike Fedyk suggested:
> 
>>Yeah, just run badblocks -w on the drive and be done with it... ;)
> 
> William M. Quarles replied with his physics theories on repairing bad sectors. 
> 
James Wilkinson wrote:
> You might not be aware of this:
> 
> Modern hard disk drives keep a number of sectors spare. When a sector
> fails (or is failing), and the computer attempts to write to that sector,
> the hard drive will automatically use one of its spare sectors instead.
> Any further references to that sector will automatically be rerouted to
> the new, good location.
> 
> This is all done internally by the drive: the OS typically never even
> sees this.
> 
> It sounds like you've already written zeros to the entire drive. This
> would have replaced all the bad blocks already: you *shouldn't* see any
> bad blocks.

I was partially aware of this.

In M$ OSes, I've also seen disks get bad sectors detected on them, then 
when they are fully (or mediumly) reformatted, the bad sectors 
disappear.  Is this a necessary step to get the drive to make use of 
those spare sectors?

> If you do, then the disk has used up all its spare sectors and is dying.
> Don't use it for any data you can't easily recreate.

It was a slight accident involving a small magnet.  A one-time event. 
There are only about 3 MB of bad sectors on the disk.  I doubt that any 
more sectors will go bad unless more magnetism comes into play. 
Although, this is also a Sony Vaio desktop, and they all also stupidly 
use small magnets to retain all of their cosmetic cover flaps on the 
front.  There is one that is pretty close to the hard drive.  That might 
be part of the problem, too.

Thanks,
William