*BSD News Article 80372


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From: dwatson@stout.entertain.com (Darryl Watson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Sector errors, how to repair?
Date: 10 Oct 1996 16:23:01 -0600
Organization: ABWAM, Inc., full service ISP, voice: 1+ 303 730-6050
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <53jt05$2sf@stout.entertain.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: stout.entertain.com


Help!  I am running BSDI 2.0 with patches, and my system disk is registering
serious errors.  Below is a taste of the /var/log/messages file:

Oct 10 16:15:41 stout kernel: sd0: sn 577999: media error: unrecovered read 
error (18 retries)
Oct 10 16:15:41 stout kernel: sd0: retry 2
Oct 10 16:15:41 stout kernel: sd0: sn 577999: media error: unrecovered read 
error (18 retries)
Oct 10 16:15:48 stout kernel: sd0: sn 577999: media error: unrecovered read 
error (18 retries)
Oct 10 16:15:48 stout kernel: sd0: retry 1
Oct 10 16:15:48 stout kernel: sd0: sn 577999: media error: unrecovered read 
error (18 retries)
Oct 10 16:15:48 stout kernel: sd0: retry 2
Oct 10 16:15:48 stout kernel: sd0: sn 577999: media error: unrecovered read 
error (18 retries)

I brought the system down to single user mode, and ran diskdefect thus:

	# diskdefect -a -swcv sd0 12345678

But after a few minutes of churning on the disk, it registers read errors 
on a differnet sector number than mentioned above, and crashes with a 
core dump, saying 'memory fault'.

I have also run fsck, but didn't have the guts to fool with 'badsect'.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can salvage my system disk 
(on which I have done backups!) without replacing it?

TIA!