[CALUG] hard disk "repaiir"

[Walt Smith]

I have a hard disk that once in awhile reports, in linux,
that SmartMon has detected something bad.  It seems to be
in the same place, best as I can figure.

I'm familiar with the way disks USED to work.

1.  At the primary level of the disk itself 
( self assessment and fixing if possible low level invisible to SW )..
if the data is sitting there unchanged, but access is bad, will
the disk detect an attempted "write" to that area, and
subsequently remap the "sectors"...  i.e if the old/bad data is rewritten,
the the old data is irrelevent. Hence the drive simply maps itself.

2.  Do the disk drivers in Linux know about bad sectors/cylinders etc,
and perform their own re-map using the higher level format of
the drive itself ?  i.e. ext3 etc..  I don't know the specs for the ext.x
formats in the sense of error remapping...  of kernel capability.


And yes, I've read that once that message shows up, the drive is
 G O I N G   B A D  !!!

thx for inputs..

Walt .......


----
 The government is lawless, not the press (people).
 ( [Supreme Court] Justice Douglas re: The Pentagon Papers )