The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/evild4ve on 2025-04-25 19:18:48.
This is on a blank 4TB WD Black disk from 2013, which I want to use as a dustbin.
I'm trying to shrink an empty partition to avoid some localized bad sectors
badblocks -svw /dev/sdd1 found these 28 errors:-
12316132, 12316133, 12316134, 12316135
2964743748, 2964743749, 2964743750, 2964743751
2964744768, 2964744769, 2964744770, 2964744771
2964768260, 2964768261, 2964768262, 2964768263
2964769280, 2964769281, 2964769282, 2964769283
2964770296, 2964770297, 2964770298, 2964770299
2964771316, 2964771317, 2964771318, 2964771319
This was a Win7 OS disk and I imagine it's more likely to be media degradation than physical damage, such as with 16kb being constantly over-written into the same file, which the disk firmware reallocated six times, exhausting its Reallocated Sectors Count in the process.
But the disk's blocksize is 4096 and I forgot to change the command from its default of 1024.
These are both very small areas of the disk <2GB.
My question is can I simply convert the 1024 block numbers into the equivalent 4096 ones? like:-
12,316,132 > 3,082,035 which is at ~12GB
2,964,743,748 > 741,185,937 which is at ~2830GB
And therefore a partition table like this to avoid those small areas:-
Unallocated: 16GB
Partition 1: from 16GB to 2832GB
Unallocated: 16GB
Partition 2: from 2848GB to END
Apologies that I couldn't quite understand this from the badblocks man page. I realized it was a big assumption on my part that two blocks that are consecutive in a 1024 numbering would also be consecutive in a 4096 numbering... given the medium is laid out as concentric rings and not a long line. Or in other words: does block 12,316,132 in 1024 numbering being logically equivalent to block 3,082,035 in 4096 numbering necessarily mean it's in the same physical location on the same platter?
And as a follow-up question, if my hypothesis is reasonable that this is media degradation, should I try to reset the disk's Reallocated Sectors count?