[comp.unix.ultrix] Disk woes on MVII / RD53

paulr@umbc5.umbc.edu (Paul Riddle) (02/10/91)

Hi everyone,

I've got a MicroVAX II here that was donated to our department.  It
has three RD53 disks, one of which seems to be sick.  Currently I'm
running Ultrix 3.0 on it (haven't gotten around to upgrading) and
every so often I get a "disk transfer error" logged to my syserr file.
I ran through it with the radisk utility and got a bunch of force
error modifiers set, and now it refuses to fsck, complaining that it
can't read these blocks.  I got around this earlier by newfs'ing the
disk, but the problem has returned.

Normally in this case we would just have field service come out and
replace the drive; however, this machine isn't covered by our service
contract, so I would like to see if I can salvage the disk.  Is there
any way I can do a low level format on an RD53 so it can find its bad
blocks?  This would seem like the best solution.  If it's not
possible, is there anything else I can do, or should I forget it?

Paul Riddle                         | paulr@umbc3.umbc.edu
Systems Programmer / Administrator  | ...!{uunet,haven}!umbc3!paulr
UMBC, Computer Science Department   |
Baltimore, MD 21228                 | (301) 455-3962

paulr@umbc4.umbc.edu (Paul Riddle) (02/12/91)

In article <4983@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> paulr@umbc5.umbc.edu (Paul Riddle) writes:
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>I've got a MicroVAX II here that was donated to our department.  It
>has three RD53 disks, one of which seems to be sick.  Currently I'm
etc...

Thanks to everyone who responded to my previous posting.  I decided that
for the time being, the easiest thing to do would be to try a low level
format on the drive (the machine isn't in great demand)...
Anyhow, I was able to locate the appropriate diagnostic tape floating
around campus, so I reformatted the drive and the errors haven't returned
yet.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thanks again,


Paul Riddle                         | paulr@umbc3.umbc.edu
Systems Programmer / Administrator  | ...!{uunet,haven}!umbc3!paulr
UMBC, Computer Science Department   |
Baltimore, MD 21228                 | (301) 455-3962