[ltp] Bad hard drive sector

[Bill Sheppard]

Not specifically Thinkpad related, but hopefully someone can help!

I was doing a backup the other day and the computer hung on a given file
with the hard drive light constantly on.  A bit of sleuthing turned up
the following in syslog:

    Jan 15 00:01:02 clonelptp kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 {
    DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
    Jan 15 00:01:02 clonelptp kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 {
    UncorrectableError  }, LBAsect=31051297, sector=31051287
    Jan 15 00:01:02 clonelptp kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown

Turning off dma allowed the task to continue, although still receiving
an error code (and that file wasn't intact).  Running Smartmontools
(smartctl -t long /dev/hda) returned:

    === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
    Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining 
    LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
    # 1  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       00%     
    1202         31051297

So it appears there is a bad sector (or sectors on the hard drive). 
It's a fairly new Toshiba MK6026GAX 60GB.  I understand the drives are
supposed to reallocate bad sectors automatically, but it appears it
isn't since the error persists.  Any ideas how I can correct this?  I
didn't find any other bad sectors in the testing, but might this mean
the drive is going to be unreliable?

Thanks for any input...

Bill

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Sheppard                                  Industry Marketing Manager
bill.sheppard@sun.com                   Consumer and Mobile Systems Group
(408) 404-1254 (x68154)                            Sun Microsystems, Inc.