theoretical question about disks and os

[Max Okumoto]

Raphael Marmier wrote:
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
Ahh... you do know that the IBM DeskStar drives
have a huge failure rate.  There was a processing
error in the manufacture of drives during those
years.  Major PR problems for IBM, class action suit
and they sold the drive division after that.
If you still have data on them that you want to keep
you should copy them else where.
				Max