On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 10:21:37 +0100, Zak wrote:

Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:

I can't imagine where you get the idea that there is "[a] published rate"
of bad block errors applicable to all SATA disk drives.

The data sheet. If the data sheet tells me there is less than 1
uncorrectable read error per 10^15 BITS read, that maps to a certain
number of bad blocks occurring.

an uncorrectable read or write error /= a bad block. Errors happen
all the time on good media - the trick is they need to be caught &
dealt with at a high rate of success. So they're talking errors from
good media, not failure expectations of media AFIK.

For (S)ATA the rate is 10 times as high,
at least in the data sheet.

That should tell you something.