Re: Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
- From: Polytropon <freebsd@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:26:55 +0100
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:06:55 -0800, "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So, the question is, should I:
1) RMA the drive back to Seagate?
Yes.
2) Somehow try to lock-out the bad sector(s)? (If so, how?)
[...]
If it was failing all over the place (and on multiple blocks), then yea,
sure, I'd RMA it back to Seagate in a heartbeat. But heck! It's only one
sector. And what's one sector between friends?
If there's already error messaging to the OS, then the drive's
firmware has noticed that it can't compensate errors anymore.
This means: Probably there isn't only one bad sector - there
are lots of them. (The drive uses spare sectors to move data
to them when a sector in use gets bad.)
Backup all your important data and get rid of this drive, this
will save you possibly upcoming trouble.
Before posting this, I googled around a bit for the crrent Accepted Wisdom
regarding such sitiations. Most seems to say that bad blocks (even one?)
are an early warning of impending doom (for the drive), and suggest trashing
or RMA'ing the drive. I just sorta wanted to know if folks here would agree
or disagree with that.
From my knowledge and experience, this is correct.
One thing concerns me about the thought of RMA'ing the drive back... The
last time I RMA'd a drive (years ago & a different brand) I got back as a
replacement a ``refurb'' drive. Hummm. If I RMA this drive, it is possible
that Seagate would replace it with a refurb whose remaining life may perhaps
prove to be even less than the drive I am RMA'ing? Do Seagate RMA drive
replacements come with fresh platters?
There's always smartctl (from port smartmontools) to do some checking
on the drive you get back.
P.S. If I _do_ end up RMA'ing the thing back, do I need to worry about
scrubing the drive squeaky clean first... you know... using one of these
multiple write-over progs (like `wipe') if I am paranoid... as I am...
about the possibility of old credit card numbers lying around in unallocated
sectors on the drive? (The drive is empty _now_, but earlier it was in
serious/heavy use.)
You could first mount all the partitions (from a live CD or DVD)
of the disk and then to the magical "remark read-file" command
(rm -rf /), and afterwards running dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0
bs=1m for a while. Check that ad0 really is the drive you want
to clean, or else. :-)
I guess what I'm asking is: Do Segate and the other manufacturers care
enough about their customer's privacy to securely wipe old drives/platters
that come in to them for RMA? Or do I need to worry 'bout that for my own
self?
I've got no experience with how Seagate treats his customers.
To be sure, at least clean your disk a bit as mentioned above,
because that's for YOUR security. If Seagate is "intelligent"
enough to send you a "new" drive back with a FAT or NTFS file
system on it... you'll delete it anyway.
Help the manufacturer - help you. :-)
--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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- Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
- From: Ronald F. Guilmette
- Bad Blocks... Should I RMA?
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