I've started seeing medium errors logged for my <QUANTUM, FIREBALL 
ST3.2S, 0F0C> on an Adaptec (aic7880 Single Channel) controller under
NetBSD-1.2/i386.  FWIW, here's a sample message:

Aug 16 19:05:09 twig2 /netbsd: sd0(ahc0:0:0): medium error, info =
   4579827 (decimal), data = 31 39 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Trying to read the corresponding file gives an "Input/Output error".

Now, years ago on old Sun3s with SunOS, I vaguely recall I used to
handle media problems by using "format" and remapping the bad sectors.
These days at work, everything is under warranty and we just exchange
anything that starts going bad.  I haven't worked with i386 machines
before, and I'm at a loss as to what to do...  (This is my home
machine, so it's a cheap little Pentium mostly-clone.)

Is it normal for a brand-new disk to give such errors, or should I
ask the vendor for a new one?  Should the SCSI code in NetBSD be
taking care of remapping bad sectors, should the disk be doing it
automatically, should I be using some program to do it?  A brief
pointer should suffice; I'm sure if I read the right manpages, memory
will start to return. :-)


Anne.
-- 
Ms. Anne Bennett, Computing Services, Concordia University, Montreal H3G 1M8
anne@alcor.concordia.ca                                       (514) 848-7606