Ext3 users - Jan 2005 - Advice for dealing with bad sectors on /

All,

Trying to figure out how to deal with, I assume, a dying disk that's
unfortunately on / (ext3).

Getting errors similar to:

Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady
SeekComplete Error }
Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError },
LBAsect=163423, high=0, low=163423, sector=163360
Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:41 (hdb), sector
163360

When I rebooted, the system threw me into a shell, to get me to "fix"
things.
So, I did an e2fsck -c -v /dev/hdb1 to attempt to fix things.  The badblocks
checking took 20 hours (it's a 200GB disk).  Then I went through the
question/answer session, hoping to get through the problems...

I rebooted after this, and the machine is running, but I'm betting that
failure
is close.  I've been trying to use smartctl to see if the bad locations were
actually remapped, but the Current_Pending_Sector count is 227.  I think this
means that these are sectors that are queued to be remapped, but have not been.

So...  I have a / disk that's flaky, and believe it or not, it's under
warranty, so I can replace it. 

Some questions:

1)  Is there a way to copy data off of this disk, so that I could simply swap
out the disk, turn the pc back on, and be operational?  I am trying to avoid
the extensive downtime associated with a plug-in-new-hd-and-reinstall scenario.
 Note: doing a dd from the disk to /dev/null errors out at the first bad
sector.

2) I don't have a RAID setup, but I do have backups.  Is there a relatively
easy way to plug in a new hd, partition/format it, and copy what's on the
ailing drive to it, and then somehow set it up to be the boot drive, and swap
the two?  any advice would be greatly appreciated.

3) Slightly off topic, but worth asking:  I do backups with rsync.  I have what
I think is everying I need.  Is there anything special (read:  doing forget to
rsync directories x,y,and z) so that you can reproduce the disk with the OS on
it) I should be doing for backups?

Thanks!

Steve

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> Getting errors similar to:
> 
> Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady
> SeekComplete Error }
> Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 {
> UncorrectableError },
> LBAsect=163423, high=0, low=163423, sector=163360
> Dec 31 20:44:30 mybox kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:41 (hdb),
> sector
> 163360
This may not be the disk; it could also be the controller.  I've seen it go
both ways.  Any problems on hda?

Try adding ide=nodma to the kernel parameters.  If the problem goes away, the
problem is in the kernel driver for the controller or motherboard chipset.
> When I rebooted, the system threw me into a shell, to get me to
"fix"
> things. So, I did an e2fsck -c -v /dev/hdb1 to attempt to fix things.
> The badblocks checking took 20 hours (it's a 200GB disk).  Then I went
> through the question/answer session, hoping to get through the problems...
A better way to go about this is booting off the rescue CD and doing the e2fsck
scan there.  Otherwise, there could be leftover problems from running the scan
off of the partition you are scanning.
> Some questions:
Best advice to all 3 questions: get some sort of disk imaging software.

The disk imaging software may copy the bad sectors (i.e. sectors marked bad now
may also be marked bad on the new drive), but you can force e2fsck to rescan bad
sectors.

Joseph D. Wagner