On 7/15/08, Jim Kuzdrall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Curious. Why not use the non-destructive badblocks write option -n?
Background: The "non-destructive write test" goes through the disk, one block at a time, reading the existing contents into memory, then writing and reading test patterns on that block, then writing out the saved contents again. The "destructive write test" writes a test pattern to every block on the disk, then reads/compares, then repeats for each successive test pattern. So, my reasoning: First, the extra I/O to preserve the existing contents slows things down significantly. If you're wiping the disk anyway that's a waste of time. Second, because the destructive test writes the pattern to the entire disk before reading anything, if there's anything weird going on with caching or bleed-over or whatever horror story you can dream up, it's more likely to flush it out. Finally, the destructive test leaves every block on the disk zeroed, which clears out any residual traces of anything that might confuse the installer during the reinstall. -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/