On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 12:33:00PM -0700, Brian de Alwis wrote:
>  1. I'm guessing this is pretty serious :-/  Especially given those
>     magically-whisked away sectors; I thought the drive should have
>     remapped them automagically without ever showing a read error?
>     Should I be buying a new drive ASAP?

Yes, that's the only sane thing to do if you care for your data ;-)
When the drive can not remap sectors itself any more, it must have grown
quite a few defects, IIUC.

In my experience all such drives will die soon. Get your data off of it while
you still can.

Martin