[CentOS] SMARTD (?)

Fri Feb 26 22:08:23 UTC 2010
William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com>

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