> Alternatively, use dd to write to > the bad block(s) and that will probably force the drive to perform a > sector reallocation.
In my case, that sector was already written several times, but still causes the kernel to log errors every second time it's read. For some reason the drive appears to refuse to reallocate it (as the read problems don't stop). > Are you sure you're initiating badblocks with the correct parameters? It's difficult to make mistakes there. Use -b 512 and stick in the numbers from fdisk -lu. > It seems strange that it would not find the same errors given that your > test and badblocks will be doing effectively the same thing at the > system call level... Not strange at all. badblocks verifies within seconds, at most minutes, after writing. The magnetic surface holds the data for that long, ergo nothing to report by badblocks. When I do a dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null an hour later, the recording has sufficiently degraded for the drive to need several attempts to read it. At least that's how I interpret the kernel error, though I'm always open to better/more correct explanations (technically sound ones...). Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
