SUMMARY: Bad block on an IDE disk

My original question is below.
I received responses from Christophe Dupre, Peter Stokes, and
"sysadmin".  They were unanimous: There is no good solution
for this problem.  Replacing the disk is the only way to deal
with it.  A SCSI disk might be able to deal with it, but not
IDE.
Until the disk is replaced we just have to hope that the machine
doesn't try to create a file using the bad block.

> 
> There's trouble with an IDE disk on an Ultra 5.  Fcsk and format
> agree that there's a bad block.  They don't agree on the block 
> number, which puzzles me, but maybe it works that way because
> format deals with the whole disk and fsck deals with paritions.
> 
> I've never dealt with a bad disk block before.  I always assumed
> that there was some method for putting it into a bad sector list 
> so it would never be used again.  It doesn't seem to be happening 
> here.  The 'defect' subcommand of format won't do anything.  It 
> says that either the controller can't do defect management or the 
> disk does it automatically.  The latter doesn't seem to be
> happening, since the same bad block keeps reappearing.
> 
> The disk seems to work OK as it is.  The contents of that partition
> are pretty static, so it may just be luck that we haven't hit the
> bad block in routine operation.  Is there anything that can be
> done, other than sending the disk back for replacement?
> 

*   Patrick L. Nolan                                          *
*   W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory (HEPL)       * 
*   Stanford University                                       *
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