On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 01:46:56PM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote: > You're still at risk of course, but since I don't believe that bad > sectors spread like a fungus I suspect you're not at much more risk than > you already are with RAID0. Ahh...that may not be quite right. If the bad blocks are just due to a failure in the oxide coating _in situ_, maybe. But I've seen cases where the failure actually resulted from some of the oxide flaking off--head strikes, most commonly--and this *can* "spread like a fungus" as the particulate can damage heads, stick to platter surfaces and cause further damage, etc. Reflecting, I don't think I've seen that kind of failure since drives have been using cobalt oxides, but nevertheless, hard as it may be, it's still a coating. The general rule still applies--once you start seeing failures on your side of the interface, it means you've been undergoing enough failures that the on- drive sector remapping is exhausted; you've already experiencing multiple sector failures for some time. It's time to change drives. Cheers, -- Dave Ihnat President, DMINET Consulting, Inc. dihnat@xxxxxxxxxx
