[ale] One possible explanation - Re: 9.10 smart errors

[J. D.]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Robert Reese <ale at sixit.com> wrote:

> Hello J. D.,
>

Hey Robert,


>
> Monday, November 2, 2009, 10:11:05 AM, you wrote:
>
>
> > In my case I believe the tool reported around 1700 bad sectors. This
> seems
> > like an alarming amount don't you think? I need to check it again and see
> if
> > it has changed.
>
> My experience with these new massive harddrives is that the magnetic
> layers' density has gotten so tight that it is easy for a sector to fail.
>  Furthermore, I believe these drives are coming with many such failed
> sectors from the factory, and that the manufacturers have significantly
> 'padded' the sector count to ensure the number of available useful sectors
> will easily reach the number of sectors required to meet the specified drive
> size.
>
> <SNIP>


> That is, I think manufacturers intentionally make larger harddrives with
> more bad sectors and label them as smaller drives rather than to make a
> drive that more closely matches its physical capacity with far less bad
> sectors.
> ere is what I do to accommodate the potential for excessive, rapid failure
> of active sectors in my non-RAID configured systems (meaning most non-server
> boxes): leave about 10% raw/unpartitioned, keep any storage partitions below
> 95% full and other partitions under 90% full.  When a drive gets close to
> using all of its allotted replacement sectors, I simply obtain a new drive
> (preferably larger) and image/ghost/duplicate the failing drive to the new
> one.  Then I remove the failing drive, label it, and put it with all the
> other outdated or failing drives I've saved over the years to server as an
> inexpensive 'hail mary' archive/backup if the need arises.
>
> To put it succinctly: DON'T PANIC. :)
>
> Thanks for the enlightening info. I am a little curious to know other
aler's bad sector counts other aler's encounter with the tool in 9.10. It is
actually a tool first used in Fedora I think. I heard somewhere recently
that drives ship with bad sectors so it must not a sign of the apocalypse
death knell it used to be.

Best regards,

J. D.
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