theoretical question about disks and os

[Raphael Marmier]

Is it possible for a poorly written disk driver/filesystem to trash 
blocks on a hard disk? By trashing I mean that subsequent access result 
in an i/o error, aven accross reboot.

I have such a disk where it happened a few years ago. Curiously, the 
damaged blocks where the first blocks of partitions that where mounted. 
The maker's test software says the drive's ok, as well as s.m.a.r.t., 
although it needed a "reformat" with the same tool to get rid of the bad 
blocks.

I would think it must be some kind of hardware failure, but a recent 
discussion about linux filesystems makes me wonder... linux was running 
on that disk, after all, with reaiserfs. And it was 3 years ago.

Raphael