Ben Zeller wrote:
>
>I aquired a 800 MB Quantum Lightening drive that I popped in an LC3 (with
>fpu) and loaded NetBSD onto.  When I first boot up, I get all sorts of
>errors looking like this when I get to the file system check:
>
>The following disk sectors could not be read: <disk sector>
>sdo(ncrscsi0:0:0): Check Conditions on CDB: <hex code>
>Sense Key: Media Error
>Info Field: <string of numbers>
>Comment Info: <string of numbers>
>ASC/ASCQ: Unrecoverable Read Error
>
>The error appears several times with different numbers everywhere I put the
>brackets.  Every time I run a command, like fsck, more, or man, the same
>errors pop up once or twice and then the command runs.  In the case of fsck
>or fsck_ffs, they are unable to repair the problem and just repeat an
>seemingly infinite string of those error messages (I got up to about twenty
>before I stopped).
>
>I partitioned the 800 MB into a 40 MB HFS, 20 MB swap, and remainder as usr
>and root, using APS power tools then Mkfs to format.  The installer worked
>as well as it normally does -- I installed base, etc, kernel, text, and
>half of man and misc before got the scsiread #5 error.  No strange errors
>on boot except the one listed above.
>
>Is the disk toast?  Should I try reformatted with Mkfs and then
>reinstalling again?
>

It sounds as if the disk has either acquired some bad sectors or possibly
the manufacturers "bad-sector list" on the disk has been hosed. I would do
a low-level reformat, with the option "create new bad-sector list"
selected. If your formatter doesn't have this option, get one that does.
The APS drivers after 4.0 include this option - I think you can download
them from their website.

It is possible that the disk is actually ok & that some other condition has
caused the appparent problem, but your disk drive is so important that I
see no reason to take chances!

Dan Killoran

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