Re: new kernels and disk crash!

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> I powered down the machine for some hours, restarted it... the
> problem persists.  Disk busted.

But not necessarily totally busted.  "Read retries exhausted" sounds to
me like a (now-)bad sector, not a whole-drive failure.

If the disk is smart enough, you could just write over it and let it
spare out that sector.  You could also try using scsictl reassign to
forcibly spare out the failing sector.

Another potential option, if you can manage it, is to juggle
partitioning so the failing sector isn't part of any partition, or at
least no partition you're using - I note the sector number you reported
is not so early in the drive as to hold the partition table.

I've used each of those tactics to squeeze extra life out of old
drives.  Unless the sector failed because something was hammering it
hard in the past, the rest of the disk is probably close to failing,
but it may be worth trying.

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