[Coco] OT: Help with horrible bad NAS purchase, Linux EXT3 file system blindly used.

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 3:18 AM, Stephen H. Fischer
<SFischer1 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
>> Modern drives map out bad blocks and map in spare blocks.
>
> That's my understanding also. I hope that this cannot be prevented some how.
> That may be my salivation if I do not return the drive to Mexico for another
> one. (Five year warranty perhaps.)
>
> I did not find the forum until after I had gotten my first replacement unit.
> Lots of horror stories, I added mine own.
>
> The question is, should I just hang on and hope for the best or try and get
> Seagate to exchange the bad drive again? Another failure soon would suggest
> exchanging now.
>
> Is the Mirror software part of Linux EXT3 or must it be Maxtor / Seagate's
> code? The web interface surely is. My only knowledge of Linux is that it is
> something like OS-9.
>

Linux does have software raid, but I've no idea if this is what your
device uses, or if your device even uses Linux.   The software raid in
Linux is not part of EXT3, it is implemented with a different set of
tools, although the filesystem being mirrored may be an ext3
filesystem.

Remember, EXT3 is just a filesystem, it is implemented on many
operating systems, Linux just happens to be the most common place
you'll find it used.  I don't think the term "Linux EXT3" makes sense.
 There's Linux, and there's EXT3, but the two are not dependent upon
each other :)

> If Seagate refuses to an exchange for another drive, I will have to remove
> the drive, put it into one of my Windows systems and reformat it to NTFS and
> then look at the drive counters.
>

You do not need to format the drive to look at the SMART information.
There are almost certainly tools for looking at the SMART data in
Windows, but I'm not familiar with them.   These tools should not
require any formatting of the disk.

> There are instructions pointed to on the forum as to how to read the EXT3
> file system under Windows, I did not see any instructions as to how the
> counters can be read.
>
> And sorry for the test message and shortened post, why the bounce of the
> first long post rejection from the list server sent to me?
>
> SHF
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Pittel" <fwp at deepthought.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 11:38 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] OT: Help with horrible bad NAS purchase,Linux EXT3 file
> system blindly used.
>>
>> I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble with the array. I hope that
>> ext3 doesn't
>> block out bad blocks on a drive. On a standard linux installation the
>> command "badblocks"
>> scans devices for badblocks and maps them out of the filesystem. Modern
>> drives map out bad
>> blocks and map in spare blocks.
>>
>> Wish I could be of more help but with only a limited web interface there's
>> not much you can
>> do to fix things at the OS levels.
>
> I never expected such an utterly primitive interface!!!
>
>
>
>
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