OT: [HW] Bad blocks on my hard drive]

[Meng Cheah]

Mike Oliver wrote:

> Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 01:10:38PM -0400, Meng Cheah wrote:
>>
>>> I recently bought a Maxtor 250G hard drive.
>>> I've been using it for a few months with no problems.
>>>
>>> I needed to use the remaining 150G as hda4,
>>> I partitioned it and ran "sudo mkfs.ext3 -cjv /dev/hda4".
>>>
>>> It showed:
>>> mke2fs 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
>>> Filesystem label=
>>> OS type: Linux
>>> Block size=4096 (log=2)
>>> Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
>>> 18317312 inodes, 36624183 blocks
>>> 1831209 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
>>> First data block=0
>>> 1118 block groups
>>> 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
>>> 16384 inodes per group
>>> Superblock backups stored on blocks:
>>>      32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 
>>> 2654208,
>>>      4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872
>>>
>>> Running command: badblocks -b 4096 -s /dev/hda4 36624183
>>> Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 
>>> done                        183
>>
>>
>>
>> The position of the '183' is very odd and not at all like the other
>> parts of the output.  I have no idea what that is.
>
>
>
> Ooh!  Ooh!  I know!  Pick me!
>
> This comes from the progress meter of the test.  From time to time
> it prints the block it's currently looking at, and does a carriage
> return without linefeed to do it again.  For some reason, when it prints
> "done", it erases some of the number, but not all of it.
>
> So the 183 is simply the last three digits of the number of blocks,
> which is 36624183.

Greetings, masters :-)

While waiting for responses since my original posting,
I contacted Maxtor Support and they are sending me a replacement.

Then after a little reading and thinking, I ran "tune2fs -l /dev/hda4".
There was no mention of bad blocks.

I also ran "e2fsck -ccv /dev/hda4".
"sudo e2fsck -ccv /dev/hda4
Password:
e2fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
Checking for bad blocks (non-destructive read-write test)
Testing with random pattern: done                        183
<snip>
       0 bad blocks
..."

Out of curiousity, I ran "e2fsck -ccv /dev/hda3".
"sudo e2fsck -ccv /dev/hda3
e2fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
Checking for bad blocks (non-destructive read-write test)
Testing with random pattern: done                        400
<snip>
       0 bad blocks
..."

I began to suspect false positives and was waiting for the replacement drive
to arrive to check if it indeed had bad blocks.
Turns out that I did not understand the "183" or "400".
You're right, Mike.
/dev/hda3 has "Block count:              12209400"
so "Testing with random pattern: done                        400"

Thanks again, Lennart and Mike, for the help and elucidation :-)

BTW
I bought the drive at PC Village on Yonge, near Bloor.
When I contacted them, they cheerfully referred me to Maxtor Support and 
advised
me to ask for advance service, so that Maxtor would send me a drive in 
advance.

Maxtor Support wanted me to run their Windows-based diagnostics.
When I explained that I had 4 partitions, 1 Windows, 3 Linux and nowhere 
to store
the data while troubleshooting, they told me that they would be sending 
me a drive.
I could send them back my drive upon receipt of the replacement drive. 
No hassles.
All they wanted was the serial # for identification of the drive and my 
credit card #
for advance service.







--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wini/Mailing_lists