De-activate a swap partition - I don't believe it!

[James Wilkinson]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> Rebooting didn't help.  During bootup it reported
> I/O error on device hdb, logical block 0.

Gordon Messmer wrote:
> Well, that probably means that the drive has a bad sector in a very unlucky 
> spot.

Modern disks will remap bad sectors if they get a chance.

If a sector goes bad fast enough that the disk doesn't get a chance to
repair it, *then* you'll see a bad sector. But if you attempt to
overwrite it (say by repartitioning and reformatting), then the disk
will map in a known good sector from a list of reserves.

Anne, you say it's out of warrantee. I wouldn't trust that drive for
important data, but it will *probably* be perfectly well behaved for
temporary stuff and stuff you don't care about.

Keep an eye on the output of
smartctl -l error /dev/hdb
in any case!

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james | That brought a lump to the eye and a tear to the
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | throat.
                      |     -- "I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue", BBC Radio 4