Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] defect management block device
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:59:19
Message-Id: 200803241758.14792.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] defect management block device by Enrico Weigelt
1 On Monday 24 March 2008, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
2 > Hi folks,
3 >
4 >
5 > does anyone know an (virtual) block device which can do automatic
6 > defect management (if the underlying disks have badblocks) ?
7 >
8 > My idea goes like this:
9 > * one or more devices are assigned to one block device
10 > * a bunch of spare blocks are reserved for defect management
11 > (so the device looks smaller than the sum of assigned disks)
12 > * if an badblock is detected, it's automatically remapped
13 > to an spare block
14 >
15 > In fact, just what drive-internal defect manangement does, but
16 > at OS / driver level.
17
18 I don't see the point, unless you are dealing with drives that do not
19 have defect management.
20
21 What makes you think you can accomplish this result better than the
22 firmware on the drive? It seems to me that if the drive firmware missed
23 the opportunity to relocate the bad block, then your window of
24 opportunity to do it in your code has long since passed. IOW, the OS
25 code cannot possibly ever achieve it's design result.
26
27 Just a thought, maybe you know some aspect of disks that I don't and can
28 see where this would be useful. From where I sit, I can;t see any such
29 use-case.
30
31
32 --
33 Alan McKinnon
34 alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
35
36 --
37 gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] defect management block device Eric Martin <freak4uxxx@×××××.com>