Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 01:02:44 -0800 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Jason George <j.b.george@ieee.org> Cc: "'freebsd-current@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Issue with Bad Block scan on fresh disk Message-ID: <199811290902.BAA00501@dingo.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 18 Nov 1998 01:07:23 MST." <01BE128F.CD600D40@infomat>
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> I was building two new 3.0 boxes when I stumbled upon a little nuance > with the bad block scan within the initial sysinstall. I was wondering >if anyone else had noticed this or had any suggestions. First suggestion; wrap your paragraphs. It's a real pain to reply to badly formatted messages. 8( > Here's the scenario: > > I took a new 5.2G Quantum IDE drive out of the sealed static bag, > configured the BIOS to detect it, and booted the 3.0-RELEASE boot > floppy. > > I chose a Custom Install, and Dangerously Dedicated the entire disk, > set it bootable, and flagged a Bad Block Scan. I then sliced the disk. > When it finally came time to do the bad block scan and subsequent > filesystem generation, the bad block scan DID NOT proceed, yet the > filesystem generation and system install did continue to completion. First things first: - Don't use Dangerously Dedicated unless you need it. Hint: you don't. - Don't use the bad block scan unless you are using an old MFM or RLL disk. Almost all IDE and SCSI disks perform their own defect management which is much more reliable and efficient. The bad144 mechanism is entirely unreliable on disks > 2GB. > A little perplexed, I rebooted and followed my normal installation > procedure (Custom Install, Dangerously Dedicated, etc, as above). This > time, the bad block scan ran before the filesystem generation. The > system install continued to completion. At a guess, the first time around the block scan failed silently due to the disk being uninitialised. The second time around, it probably sort-of succeeded, but on a 5GB disk I would have zero confidence in its reliability. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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