hard drive test

[Brian Densmore]

> I'm really surprised that you still see so much disk 
> software, including most 
> Linux installers, that offers to check for "bad blocks" on 
> IDE drives.  IDE 
> firmware does logical block translation, so you never see the 
> actual hard disk 
> areas that might be bad.  If the firmware can't compensate a 
> block's errors, 
> either it doesn't offer that block as part of the virtual 
> hard drive presented 
> to the system, or it has failed badly enough that you're not 
> going to get the 
> drive up to the point where you could access it to begin with. 
Theoretically yes. In actual field usage I have seen IDE drives report
bad blocks. This is really really bad when you start seeing this, 
because the IDE drive is no longer "Intelligent" enough to compensate.
An imminent sign of imminent failure. Although I have successfully used
such drives it is only a matter of time until the drive ultimately dies
an agonizing death. They are good only for playing with to see how bad 
bad can get [something for geeks to do who have too much time to play].
;)

YMMV,

Brian