Re: [t13] Re-Allocation of Defective Sectors

[Gary Laatsch]

Ray,       I know one drive company used to have at least 2 ways of invoking autorelocation   1)  If you wrote to a sector that previously had an ECC error.  It would test that sector and relocate if the firmware determined that physical portion of the media was unusable.   2)  If during a read the drive encountered a correctable ECC error, the drive would perform a test to determine if that physical area of the was unusable, if so, it would relocate that sector.       I think there might have been other ways also, but those 2 come to mind for me.  I have been away from the drive companies for a little while now and I am not sure what they do anymore.  I believe with all the self-test and SMART stuff that has been added alot of this has gotten much more sophisticated.  I don't even know if they do the previously mentioned functions anymore.  I am sure some of the drive folks have responded to you privately already.  I haven't seen any posts from any of them on the open forum.   Anyway, my input for whats its worth.   Gary Laatsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Clutts To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 2:33 PM Subject: [t13] Re-Allocation of Defective Sectors On a typical parallel ATA Hard Drive, what mechanism is used to begin the re-allocation of defective sectors.  At one time I heard that a simple write the the affected area would cause the firmware to begin the re-allocation sequence.  However I have tried this and it does not seem to work.