Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!oddjob!ncar!ames!pacbell!ditka!libove!root From: root@libove.UUCP (The Super User) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix Subject: SCO and hard disk errors Keywords: sco,hard disk,errors,bad handling Message-ID: <51@libove.UUCP> Date: 24 Jun 88 05:31:34 GMT Distribution: comp Organization: NKJL Enterprises Lines: 32 I have SCO Xenix 2.2.1 running on an IBM PC/AT clone (made by PCs Limited) and it has a Seagate Technologies ST4096 (80 megabyte) hard drive as the root device, with a ST4026 (20 megabyte) mounted secondary filesystem. The 20 meg drive has no flaws, but the 80 meg drive has a few bad tracks. The Xenix bad track (badtrk) utility does not mark them all; it, like all Xenix programs that use disk devices lets the kernel absorb a great deal of bad returns before accepting something as bad - something that causes a great deal of trouble with floppies - the Xenix utilities will often write to a bad spot on a floppy (assuming that it *will* hold out, instead of the more likely case that it will *not*) ... but anyway... So, often I am running something disk intensive and the system starts thrashing; that is, I hear the hard drive making its characteristic "seek to root, attempt to seek to target sector again" noise. My solution is to back up everything and reformat the drive with a utility that really checks out for bad blocks, and marks them as unusable. Who cares about the extra megabyte I lose if it keeps potential explosions from happenning (and keeps that awful wait during recalibration from occurring). The point of this post, anyhow, is to ask if anyone else has experienced this type of behaviour, or has any opinions on SCO's disk drive device drivers. Perhaps we could convince SCO to go a little more conservative on the drivers' retry attempts... -- Jay Libove Internet: libove@cs.cmu.edu libove@andrew.cmu.edu 5313 Ellsworth Avenue formtek!ditka!libove!libove@pt.cs.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15232 UUCP: cmucspt!formtek!ditka!libove!libove (412) 621-9649 cadre!pitt!darth!libove!libove