linux-kernel - Re: SATA hdd refuses to reallocate a sector?

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite for Android: free password hash cracker in your pocket

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Thu, 30 Apr 2015 21:01:54 +0200
From:	Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:	Mark Lord <mlord@...ox.com>
Cc:	Marcus Overhagen <marcus.overhagen@...il.com>,
	kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-ide@...r.kernel.org, tj@...nel.org
Subject: Re: SATA hdd refuses to reallocate a sector?

Hi!

> > Thanks for the hint. (Insert rant about hdparm documentation
> > explaining that it is bad idea, but not telling me _why_ is it bad
> > idea. Can I expect cache consistency issues after that, or is it just
> > simple "you are writing to the disk without any checks"? Plus, I guess
> > documentation should mention what sector number is. I guess sectors
> > are 512bytes for the old drives, but is it 512 or 4096 for new
> > drives?)
> 
> For ATA, use the "logical sector size".
> For all existing drives out there, that's a 512 byte unit.
> 
> > ...but it does not do the trick :-(. It behaves strangely as if it was
> > still cached somewhere. Do I need to turn off the write back cache?
> 
> No, it works just fine.  You probably have more than one bad sector.
> After you see a read failure, run "smartctl -a" and look at the error
> logs to see what sector the drive is choking on.
> 
> Or just low-level format it all with "hdparm --security-erase".

Ok, so security erase is not easy operation to do, and it took more
than two hours, and the drive is now full of zeros.. but the bad
sectors are still there.

smartctl -t long stopped working on this one. It is no longer possible
to start a test.

It seems the drive has some firmware problems... But smart still
indicates good health and it still works (except few bad sectors).

									Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/