Apparently conflicting smartctl output

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Bas Smeelen wrote:

> On 01/06/2012 03:39 PM, Warren Block wrote:
>> On Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Bas Smeelen wrote:
>>
>>> I have had this with a drive and multiple read errors would not remap the
>>> sector.
>>> With write errors the sector would be remapped. This was a new Samsung
>>> laptop drive though, not a Western Digital.
>>
>> That's standard.  Sectors are only remapped to spares on a write error.
>>
>>> To get the sector remapped I had to fully write the drive and it was ok
>>> after that.
>>
>> Just writing to the sector should be enough.  Of course, when one sector
>> goes bad, others often follow.
>
> I just hope it does not develop more bad sectors.

That's the worrying thing.  Was it just a loose flake of oxide, or was 
it a strip that peeled off the disk?

>> From what I read on the "Bad block HOWTO for smartmontools" on sourceforge
> it's not trivial to just write to that sector and also it would destroy the
> filesystem?

Finding the right block may not be too hard.  /var/log/messages should 
show the block number, but then I don't know what tool is available to 
write to that specific block.  Tools like that are not common because 
generally, growing bad sectors means the drive is starting to fail 
anyway.

> So I just copied a big iso file several times untill the sector got
> remapped, the disk was almost full then.
> This is a brand new disk, maybe I should return it under warranty then,
> though it did not develop more bad sectors?

If possible, yes.  It already lost some data.