Help...bad block on Harddrive

[Patrick Snyder]

I have a HP B1000 server that failed on bootup. The system found a bad block. I tried to fsck the block but it was still unreadable. Is there anyway to fix this besides reformating the whole harddrive or replacing the HD and using backups to recover? I am a rookie and have minimum knowledge on topic. Also, I can still access the files and directories on drive it just appears as if the /var directory is affected and that directory holds all of my user friendly SA software like SAM. If anyone has some ideas, I would really appreciate it.

[Bill Hassell]

fsck can never fix a bad block--that is a hardware failure. fsck fixes logical problems in the directories and superblocks. Fixing this without dataloss will be difficult. LVM will perform bad block relocation as soon as you try to write to the bad area and a new block will be assigned. The problem is figuring out what needs to be rewritten. It's more complicated than just reading all the files--there may be a bad spot in a directory or even a superblock.

This is why disk mirroring and backups are so important. If you have not downloaded the Ignite/UX application, then recovery will be as you described: mediainit the disk and reinstall from your Install/Core CDROM. Then recover files from your backups. A recent Ignite backup would cut hours from the restore process.

[Patrick Wallek]

I'd probably go ahead and replace this disk. If it's found one bad block then there's always the possibility of other cropping up at the least convenient time.

If you have a service contract on this machine, get HP out there and replace the drive.

[PIYUSH D. PATEL]

Hi,

You should replace the harddisk as early as possible. If you do not have the Ignite backup then you can still backup whatever is possible ( important files ) and replace the harddisk. Using the same disk may create problems in the future.

You can still try a
fsck -y on the /var filesystem and try to recover if possible.

Piyush

[John Bolene]

Absolutely replace the drive and restore from backups. Ignite is wonderful for this purpose.

[Shahul]

Hi

No one can fix H/W failures. If U have mounting problem because of one bad block, this can avoided by using dd command. Connect a new HDD and then do a dd from old to new. U will be able to use the data except which are there in bad block.

There is no other possibilities..U will have to replace HDD.

Best of luck
Shahul