Hard Disks: Bad Block HowTo

Hardware fails, that is a fact. Nowadays, hard drives are rather reliable, but nevertheless every now and then we will see drives failing or at least having hiccups. Using smartcl/smartd to monitor disks is a good thing, below we will discuss how some lesser issues can be handled without actually having to reboot the system – it is still up to a sys admin’s own discretion to judge circumstances correctly and evaluate whether disk errors encountered are a one time incident or indicative of an entirely failing disk.