theoretical question about disks and os

[Raphael Marmier]

Thanks, that clarified things for me.

In fact I had 2 drives failing me nearly the same way, and both where 
IBM Deskstar for 2000 and 2001. I thought about heat at the time, but 
was not so sure anymore as they wheren't running so hot. Very sensitive 
to heat they must be.

Raphael

Raphael Marmier wrote:
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