Disk Error

[Eric McCoy]

Doug Hardie wrote:
> I doubt that its dying.  There is only one bad sector.  The drive is in 
> constant use.  Its ran at 100% for almost 12 hours while copying the 
> files and no errors were detected.  Its always the same sector with the 
> error.

Just as a note, hard drives now come with a number of "spare sectors" 
which they map automatically to replace dead sectors.  This is done 
because all drives ship with a few bad sectors.  Usually when errors 
like this show up, it is because the drive is out of spares.  Since 
problems like these tend to accelerate, it is a good idea at least to 
consider replacing the disk before you start losing data more than a 
sector at a time.

You might consider getting smartmontools and seeing what the drive's 
diagnostics have to say.  Usually that will tell you if this is a fluke 
or a symptom of a failing drive.