Format a Disk?

[Usulsuspct]

Recenly I have been having problems with a 20 gig HD in my MP3 server. It has locked up on me twice, that is their is an interupt error and the machine locks.

Even while the drive was working I was getting messages written to stderr on the server about DMA and stuff...

So I thought I should format my drive and start again....(the typical windows user remedy)...

What's the best way to do this?

[lazyboy]

Maybe you could reinstall your flavor of Linux and be sure to scan bad blocks during the formatting session.

[Usulsuspct]

I was hoping it wouldnt come to that....although I suspected it. I finally got samba and nfs working right and now I gotta go through it again.... :(

[lazyboy]

Well that's all I could think of. It is better to start anew so that everything is fresh. Everything would be in good shape. Your hardware is also good. So I think it is worth the format.

[error27]

what are the exact error messages?