adding bad blocks using 386/ix

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <39560 at ism780c.isc.com> darryl at ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman) writes:
>This is a better approach than automatically remapping because that
>prevents the user from attempting to reread the bad sector and possibly
>retrieving the data.

PLEASE do not add automatic remapping of bad blocks to 386/ix.  Once upon a
time I happened to be using Bell Technologies System V Rel 3.2 (which had
automatic re-mapping) and a static charge caused the disk controller to 
report a bad read for any blocks that were currently in process of
being read/written.  This wrecked havoc on the file system when portions
of the root, etc, and usr directories were automatically remapped.
Even portions of several executables were hit.

This is a real pain in the a**.  The capability to add entries to the
bad block table while running is a good capability, but PLEASE DO NOT
MAKE IT AN AUTOMATIC PART OF THE DISK DRIVER.


-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
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