fixed disk error

[Stu Heiss]

In article <1988Apr29.151753.3956 at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> romwa at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Mark Dornfeld) writes:
-
-Can anyone help with this Xenix error message?
-
-error on fixed disk (minor 40), block=16544
-Error Type 0, Code 3, Unit 0
-Write/Drive Fault
-
-The message started appearing with different blocks identified
-about a month after installation. About a dozen are now
-listed.
-
-I have run 'badtrk' already suspecting a flaw on the disk, but
-no new bad tracks appeared.
-
You can use badtrk to map out a block once you know the cylinder/head/sector.
The non-destructive test is not good enough to catch much.  The destructive
one is pretty good but can miss too.
-
-Is there a way to find out what Cylinder/Head contains the
-suspect tracks and put them in the bad track table?
-
Look at /usr/adm/messages unless you have the misfortune of a bad block
associated with that file - it happened here once.  If this does
happen, do the following:
$ mv /usr/adm/messages /usr/adm/messages.bad
$ touch /usr/adm/messages
When you start haveing disk troubles, *CHECK THE CABLES!!!*.  This is
*so* obvious that I never do it first and it has been the problem on
three different machines I'm responsible for.  I'm really going to look
there first next time it happens :-).  In particular, look for
connector pins that have lost the springiness or are bent, corosion on
the edge connector (remove with a pencil eraser), and if the cable is
bent right at the connector, a possible wire break.  If this doesn't
turn up anything, get ready for some hair pulling.  I usually do a low
level format, mkfs, and start trying to dd the raw device a number of
times to see if I can isolate a bad block or get some confidence that
the problem was cured with the format.  You may want to try swapping
cables and disk controller if you have access to some spares.