J. Clarke wrote:
TenPercent wrote:

Hi, I see the Seagate 80 gig barracuda sells
for about twice the price of other 80 gig EIDE/ATA drives
like Maxtor's and Western Digital's.

If bad blocks are showing up with increasing frequency then you need
to replace the drive. This is the classic symptom of impending drive
failure.

You should not have to use "badblocks" or "e2fsck"--the drive should
spare bad sectors transparently--if it doesn't this suggests that its
sparing has been used up which means that it is in _really_ bad shape.

I don't know where you're getting that 80 gig Barracudas go for twice
the price of other 80 gig drives--Newegg lists Western Digital for
$50, Seagate for $53, and Samsung for $59.

Before you replace your drive make _sure_ that it is getting adequate
clean power and adequate cooling--that means check voltages with a
meter to make sure your motherboard is reporting them accurately then
monitor for a while to make sure that they aren't dropping out of
spec under load and check drive temperatures with a thermocouple
probe or tempilstik. If you've got a power or cooling problem fixing
it might correct the problem you're having with your existing drive.

Regardless of any of this, bad sectors after a year of operation is
_not_ normal.

Good advice here - I recently (two weeks ago) bought a new Seagate SATA
drive - got lots of (about 20) bad blocks in the first couple of days.
Realised that the PSU was the problem and replaced it. No new bad blocks
now - system now working faster and better than before.

John.