I have a desktop PC at work that shows a bad block. PC runs Scientific LInux 5.0 and is a 2 TB WD Green Technology 2 Tb HD (Caviar Green WD20000CSRTL). This one has worked fine out of the box for several months. No problems.
Yesterday, the SMART diagnostics program smartctl (version 5.36) showed a bad block. Deciding to waste some time on it, I used http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/badblockhowto.html approach. So, I unmounted, figured out the block and that it had a file associated with it, determined the ext3 file system inode. But, I could not deduce the file as it could not read the next file inode. I zeroed out the position using dd and then rerunning smartctl that it showed another bad block: # 3 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 2151 3764125871 # 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2151 - # 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2150 - # 6 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 2146 3764125865 # 7 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 2097 The LBA is in the one partition on the HD Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 63 3907024064 1953512001 83 Linux Since, it's a new HD and not expecting catastrophic failure, I did not run ddrescue. Having a copy of spinrite around, I ran that and the HD came out squeaky clean. I use spinrite occasionally on windows xp and linux HD where I expect only one bad block. Never had problems with it. Spinrite did not find any more bad blocks. Of course, I had zeroed out the original one. Rebooting and running e2fsck, the file system is clean. Running smartctl again, I again find a bad block at LBA 3764125871 # 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 2169 3764125871 # 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2169 - ... ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 100 253 021 Pre-fail Always - 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 2169 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 3 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 195 195 000 Old_age Always - 15614 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 115 111 000 Old_age Always - 37 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 Now, there are reported issues with WD Green Technology drives (parking the heads) and lag time issues with smartctl, although I can't find the web link where I saw this several months ago. I'm a bit confused. I've never had an issue like this that didn't clear up (descrepency between smartctl and spinrite for instance). Could it be the green technology drive not playing properly with smartactl (people report this)? Should I run a bad block check with e2fsck? A nondestructive test would e2fsck -ccv /dev/sdb Advice? Bill Lutter