On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 15:23 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
<snip>
I recommend to replace that disc ASAP. When they start having to reallocate more sectors, they are in a pending complete failure state.
I second that. I had a SATA drive that showed a few bad sectors in 2008 sometime. I got the vendor software (DOS version) and ran the diags and repair. Used it for another year or so.
Bad sectors started appearing again and I knew what this meant. Started taking more frequent backups. When it was convenient, downloaded the latest diags from the vendor, ran it repeatedly and every time it found and repaired more bad sectors and finally confirmed the drive was NG. Warranty exchange was easy and prompt.
If you've been through a small initial set of bad sectors and are now seeing more (especially if you ran the vendor's software), the drive is living on borrowed time.
This has been characteristic of drives for decades - a few early defects may appear, re-map and the drive works a very long time but when more start appearing a slow death is in progress.
Mike