Automatic bad sector mapping (was: Re: Mapping abs sector ...)

[Chip Rosenthal]

In article <1991Jun10.025527.10161 at jwt.UUCP>
	john at jwt.UUCP (John Temples) writes:
>The ESIX implementation catches errors while they're still "soft,"
>i.e., the error is recoverable.  So remapping occurs with no data loss,
>as long as the first time a sector has an error it isn't a hard error.

Sorry...I still think Conor is right.  On-the-fly bad sector mapping
is the machine being too damn smart for its own good.  If you've setup
the system from the beginning with the disk manufacturer's flaw map,
you should have no call for this `feature'.  If you are looking for
this `feature' as a way of eeking out another meg or two of storage
space (i.e. don't map out marginal areas, just wait for them to fail),
I think you are being pound foolish.  (I wouldn't run non-RLL certified
hard disks on RLL controllers either when that was in vogue.  My disk
data is too valuable to screw around with.)

If you setup your disk correctly right from the start, you shouldn't
be seeing bad sectors, and this automatic mapping becomes a rarely
used feature.  And when a sector goes bad, the *last* thing I want is
for the machine to automagically patch around it.  I want bells and
lights and claxon screaming - because any time I've had a sector go
bad which wasn't on the flaw map it's meant big, big trouble is on
the way.  I'd just as soon do my reformat/reload now, rather than
waiting for a couple of weeks for the entire disk to crap out.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal     <chip at chinacat.Unicom.COM>  |  Don't play that
Unicom Systems Development      512-482-8260   |    loud, Mr. Collins.