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USB Drive Bad Sectors

Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:56:40 +0000

This is a continuation of a discussion from last month: http://linuxgazette.net/133/misc/lg/USB_Drive_Bad_Sectors.html - Kat

On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 05:04:01PM -0400, Brandon M. Reynolds wrote:

> My problem is that I get file system corruption and "bad sectors" some
> times, presumably due to an unclean shut down.  I am using an ext2

That depends, based on the error you're getting. If they're actually bad sectors that's typically indicative of a much more serious hardware issue. If, however, running fsck on it repeatedly doesn't help, then it really is screwed.

> filesystem with the thinking that a journal would just wear out the
> drive in a certain spot.  Maybe that's not correct -- I am not sure if
> the drive has a wear-leveling algorithm implemented or not.

Of course not -- software cannot determine that. Every piece of hardware has a finite life-span.

> Questions:
> 
> 1. Is ext2 the right choice?  Or would reiserfs be better? Vfat??

How long's a piece of string, and by-the-by what type of fish is that? VFAT would be good for cross-platform. Ext2 is good for read-only mount points. Ext3 is somewhat better thanks to the fact that it's ext2 with a journal bolted on to it. Reiserfs' killer feature is its developer (:P) and works well with lots of smaller, sporadic files.

> 2. Is their a quick way to detect bad sectors?  I tried running e2fsck
> -c but it has been 45 minutes so far!

man badblocks

> sd 5:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x08000002
> sdb: Current: sense key=0x3
>     ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
> end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 598730

It's screwed, Backup whatever you can from it, and bin it. -- Thomas Adam

-- 
"Wanting to feel; to know what is real.  Living is a lie." -- Purpoise
Song, by The Monkees.

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Brandon M. Reynolds [breynolds at comtime.com]
Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:18:36 -0500

>> 1. Is ext2 the right choice?  Or would reiserfs be better? Vfat??
>
>How long's a piece of string, and by-the-by what type of fish is that?
>VFAT would be good for cross-platform.  Ext2 is good for read-only
>mount points.  Ext3 is somewhat better thanks to the fact that it's ext2
>with a journal bolted on to it.  Reiserfs' killer feature is its
>developer (:P) and works well with lots of smaller, sporadic files.

Ok, I get the fact the filesystems have their pros and cons (:P), but my = question was which filesystem is best for a general purpose Linux on a = USB flash drive.

> man badblocks

I realize e2fsck runs badblocks pogram, but I guess I am still unsure as = to why that resets the USB bus during the process.

>It's screwed,  Backup whatever you can from it, and bin it.

I don't think so, but I came up with a whole different solution to my problem. I am using 3 ext2 paritions and a ramdisk. The first partition contains the OS and other static files. I use the other 2 partitions to periodically (1/hour) rsync the ram disk to the ext2 filesystem. I alternate between 2 paritions in case of a power failure. I was hoping that there would be some more automatic way of doing that. Maybe I should write my own filesystem, but then my wife would probably divorce me and I might go insane.

-Brandon Reynolds


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Benjamin A. Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:37:18 -0500

On Sun, Nov 26, 2006 at 09:56:40AM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote:

> 
> Reiserfs' killer feature is its developer (:P) [ ... ]

Thomas... you're a bad, bad man. But that's only one of the reasons we all like you. :)

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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Brian Bilbrey [bilbrey at orbdesigns.com]
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:49:24 -0500

Benjamin A. Okopnik wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 26, 2006 at 09:56:40AM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote:
>> Reiserfs' killer feature is its developer (:P) [ ... ]
> 
> Thomas... you're a bad, bad man. But that's only one of the reasons we
> all like you. :)
> 
> 

My friend writes: The biggest reason I want to start up Fuck You Linux is to do a complete renaming of reiserfs to OJFS.

I replied: fsck --glove --fits /dev/sdd1

cue water passing through nasal passages.

.brian

-- 
Brian Bilbrey : http://www.orbdesigns.com/
	"Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."

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