Re: Bad blocks on IDE drive (newbie question)

From: Tim Judd (tjudd01_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 06/29/04 

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 20:22:08 -0600

Matt Bostock wrote:
> Tim Judd wrote:
> > As I recall, the bad blocks are marked by the format process. FAT/FAT32
>
>> marks in it's File Allocation Table (hence, FAT) that sector xxxx is
>> bad. The MBR marks "Partition one starts here, ends here and is of
>> this filesystem." I doubt the OS has anything to do with it. I think
>> the OS asks to write a file to disk, and the Filesystem checks the FAT
>> before writing to a bad cluster.
>>
>> I have absolutely NO CLUE how OBSD marks bad clusters/blocks/sectors.
>> I'd get a new drive to put OBSD on anyway, but you said you can't get
>> one now. OK, so get a used one from salvation army, go to
>> http://www.streetprices.com/ or the like for inexpensive devices.
>> Don't forget to check http://www.resellerratings.com/ to check their
>> repitoire before laying money down.
>>
>> HTH
>
>
> Thanks for the info Tim. Perhaps OBSD would have checked for bad blocks
> upon formatting my drive during the install?
>
> Thanks,
> Matt :)

Any well-behaved OS should. During format (MS-Windows type) the format
process actually verifies the drive (which is why it takes so long)..
write data, read same, verify it's what was written..move on.

The quick formatting process that most other OS's take should know that
it's a possibility, however slim. I'd be curious to see if OBSD really
does or not.. I would assume it would do enough to check for bad
blocks.. <shrug> let me know.

HTH

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