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Disk failuresDisk failuresPosted Jan 27, 2008 21:58 UTC (Sun) by anton (guest, #25547)In reply to: Using fsck to defend against disk failures? by nix Parent article: ext3 metaclustering Disk drives have not used servo tracks for a long time, because one could no longer align all the heads precisely enough (e.g., because of thermal expansion). Instead, servo information exists on each platter, interspersed in some way with the data. I don't know when this change happened; a 15+-year old disk (486 generation) might still have a servo track. But couldn't the symptoms also be explained by the failure of just one of the heads?
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Disk failures Posted Jan 27, 2008 22:55 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] I said it was a prehistoric system, and indeed anything more modern than about, what, 1991 won't have this problem. I'm not sure if a head failure could cause a failure to find sector address markers: I'm not sure if you could even distinguish the two cases without digging into the drive. (As I said, my expertise in hard drive engineering is notable mainly by its absence.) It's just that heads are solid-state, and solid-state stuff doesn't die all that often, while the head assembly itself is being wrenched all over the place: simple bending could explain this, I think.
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