[Leaplist] I need help with fixing bad blocks

Tue Mar 4 15:38:10 EST 2008

Hi LEAPers,

Following John's advice I did some looking around trying to figure out why
my Ubuntu box would freeze after booting up and it turns out that this might
be caused by a bad blocks problem.  Here how I figured this out:

My computer has the following partitions:

root at ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x01840183

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63    20482874    10241406   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        20482875    20996954      257040   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3        20996955   156296384    67649715   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 30.7 GB, 30738677760 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3737 cylinders, total 60036480 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x016b35db

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63    60034904    30017421   83  Linux
root at ubuntu:/home/ubuntu#

Since I was having I/O problems which froze the computer I did a check on
them and I found this:

root at ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fsck.reiserfs /dev/sda1
reiserfsck 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)

*************************************************************
** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and  it fails **
** please  email bug reports to reiserfs-list at namesys.com, **
** providing  as  much  information  as  possible --  your **
** hardware,  kernel,  patches,  settings,  all reiserfsck **
** messages  (including version),  the reiserfsck logfile, **
** check  the  syslog file  for  any  related information. **
** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
** is available  for $25 at  www.namesys.com/support.html. **
*************************************************************

Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/sda1
Will put log info to 'stdout'

Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you
do):Yes
###########
reiserfsck --check started at Tue Mar  4 16:20:04 2008
###########
Replaying journal..
Reiserfs journal '/dev/sda1' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
Checking internal tree..
The problem has occurred looks like a hardware problem. If you have
bad blocks, we advise you to get a new hard drive, because once you
get one bad block  that the disk  drive internals  cannot hide from
your sight,the chances of getting more are generally said to become
much higher  (precise statistics are unknown to us), and  this disk
drive is probably not expensive enough  for you to you to risk your
time and  data on it.  If you don't want to follow that follow that
advice then  if you have just a few bad blocks,  try writing to the
bad blocks  and see if the drive remaps  the bad blocks (that means
it takes a block  it has  in reserve  and allocates  it for use for
of that block number).  If it cannot remap the block,  use badblock
option (-B) with  reiserfs utils to handle this block correctly.

bread: Cannot read the block (1114121): (Input/output error).

Aborted (core dumped)

Then I tried this:

root at ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# badblocks /dev/sda1
4456448
4456484
4456485
4456486
4456487
4456488
4456489
4456490
4456491
4456492
4456493
4456494
4456495
4456496
4456497
4456498
4456499
4456500
4456501
4456502
4456503

My other partitions did not report any errors.

Interestingly, I also tried a smart tools check which my partition passed:

root at ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda1
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

root at ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# smartctl -i /dev/sda1
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4K family
Device Model: MAXTOR 4K080H4
Serial Number: 674120623352
Firmware Version: A08.1500
User Capacity: 80,026,361,856 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 5
ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 1
Local Time is: Tue Mar 4 17:42:35 2008 UTC
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

I am currently running my system off a live-CD so I am able to access the
web.

My questions are:

1) Is there a way to map and isolate the bad blocks and keep on living
happily with my hard drive

or

2) what is the safest way to clone my partition to another hard disk (which
I rather not do, since I am very short on cash)

Of course, if I have missed anything, please let me know how I could
otherwise fix my computer.

Many thanks in advance,

Andrei

PS:

/dev/sda1 is my / partition with the system on it
/dev/sda2 is my /swap partition
/dev/sda2 is my /home partition with my data on it and this is the one I
*really* would like to save, if possible.
/dev/sdb1 is my /usr partition
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