[TriLUG] inconsistent results from badblocks

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

I've just bought a 500G laptop SATA drive from Intrex (it's 
a Hitachi). I ran badblocks (-svw) on it and got about a 
dozen badblocks, so Intrex kindly exchanged the drive on the 
spot without me having to go through the manufacturer (one 
of the reasons I go to Intrex).

The replacement drive also has about a dozen badblocks on 
it. This time I ran badblocks twice, to find a different 
dozen (or so) badblocks on the 2nd run. If a block was bad, 
I would expect it to stay in the same place for both runs.

Intrex says to bring it in and they'll run their bad block 
tester on it, which is windows based (I had a bad disk once 
before and they ran their Windows based tester in front of 
me, and it got the same results as linux badblocks).

I don't have a testable theory about what might be 
happening. If Intrex's windows badblocks tester OK's the 
disk, I won't know if I have a good disk or not.

Any other ways of checking the disk?

Thanks Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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