<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Robert Reese <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ale@sixit.com">ale@sixit.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hello J. D.,<br></blockquote><div><br>Hey Robert,<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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Monday, November 2, 2009, 10:11:05 AM, you wrote:<br>
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> In my case I believe the tool reported around 1700 bad sectors. This seems<br>
> like an alarming amount don't you think? I need to check it again and see if<br>
> it has changed.<br>
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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.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><SNIP><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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.<br>
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 Then I remove the failing drive, label it, and put it with all the other outdated or failing drives I've saved over the years to server as an inexpensive 'hail mary' archive/backup if the need arises.<br>
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To put it succinctly: DON'T PANIC. :)<br>
<br></blockquote><div>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.<br>
<br>Best regards,<br><br>J. D.</div></div>