On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 01:52:27AM -0400, davef1624@aol.com wrote:
> 
> We're currently using a fairly 'old' wd.c driver & 1.6 NetBSD kernel -- 
> from Nov 1, 2002 to be exact.
> 
> I'm wondering if there are any critical bug fixes (to either wd.c, 
> ata*, pciide* drivers) that might impact
> disk driver/subsystem reliability and/or error recovery since this date?

Probably, but if you don't have problems, I'm not sure why you worry :)

> 
> One fix that I noticed was the WD_SOFTBADSECT automatic bad-sector list 
> management on Apr 15, 2003
> (Revision 1.241 of wd.c).
> 
> This fix appears to improve the error recovery of the disk driver by 
> not attempting *repeated* reads
> on failed (unrecoverable) disk blocks.
> 
> What are the tradeoffs here?  Can I safely turn on this feature?

Probably, as long as you're aware what you need to do to remap a bad sector.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--