[mythtv-users] Re: RAID5 ATA IDE hardware card recommendations for mythbackend machine

Yan-Fa Li yanfali at best.com
Thu Dec 9 04:26:59 UTC 2004


Russ Dill wrote:
> 
> (BTW, there was someone here mentioning breaking up a raid array for
> the purpose of hiding bad sectors. Modern drives automatically
> relocate bad sectors. If you start to get errors from a modern drive,
> its a mechanical, electrical, or really big media failure)

I beg to differ, only SCSI drives guarentee sector reallocation 
dynamically.  That's what you're paying for, a smart controller.  IDE 
drives generally depend on the user to run an DOS util to get the same 
effect.  Check the IBM DFT tool, Seagate Seatools and Maxtor Maxblast. 
They all do external sector reallocation.  Very rarely do low end IDE 
drives perform this function automatically.  I've repaired at least a 
dozen drives using the external tool and gotten service from them as 
good as new.

Breaking up the drive doesn't "HIDE" the sectors, it mitigates the 
resync time.  Sector failure tends to occur in clusters, not wide spread 
across a drive.  By making the partition smaller you decrease repair 
time after you've done the repair.

Check your drive.  SMART Keys 5, 197 and 198 indicate sectors which are 
either reallocated or need to be.

Yan


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