[Wolves] Hard drive failure

[Andy Wootton]

Adam Sweet wrote:

> --- Kevanf1 <kevanf1 at gmail.com> wrote: 
>  
>
>>When a Hard Drive is formatted at the
>>factory there are
>>always a number of 'hidden' blocks spare.  They can
>>be brought into
>>play in this sort of scenario.  Well, that's what I
>>was told by the
>>Seagate guys :-)))
>>    
>>
>I've heard a bit about this and you stand to increase
>the capacity of the drive but it puts you at serious
>risk of losing stuff so I would be careful with this,
>not that this is applicable in this case as you have
>already lost stuff.
>
>When a hard drive fails a quality test, they reduce
>the capacity and retry the test, if it passes, it is
>rebadged with the new capacity and sold, if not they
>keep going until they have a working drive with a
>usable capacity.
>
>Bringing this extra capacity into play is a dangerous
>game.
>
>Ad
>
>=====
>  
>
I think you may be talking about two different things. Some OSs can do 
intelligent bad block replacement so some blocks are set aside as spares.

Woo