Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Matrix Mole wrote:

> On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> > I think ef2sck runs automatically if you turn off linux without exiting
> > properly, or it crashes.  Scandisk checks the actual physical disk for bad
> > sectors as well as checking file systems.  We probably did this before
> > formatting.
>
> Scandisk (both the DOS and windows version) only check partitions, even
> the surface scan will only check the partition it was told to check.
> Obviously, if you did this prior to partitioning the linux system out of
> the 8gb then it should've found any possible bad sectors (and marked
> them). Also, most format programs (mke2fs on linux IIRC) have an option to
> check sectors and mark bad ones as bad. Or perhaps it's just that it tests
> the sectors that are already marked bad.
>
Linux has badblocks (man badblocks), which can mark and apparently avoid
bad sectors.  I'm not sure that's what the problem is here, though (if the
problem is, indeed, the hard drive).  Seems like maybe some sort of
interrupt problem: I've heard of mobo's that assign non-standard
interrupts to IDE channels, and having to go into the BIOS settings to set
the IRQ manually to something more standard.  But I think if that were the
problem the drive might not boot at all.  Maybe something like Spinrite,
with the battery of tests it can run, would be something that could
effectively diagnose where the problem lies.  If there's some open source
counterpart to Spinrite, it would be nice to know about it.

James