Remove a beautifully detailed, helpful, lengthy explanation of how to

use bad144 with bad blocks on disks.

I asked the original author about this in 2001, and he said this text
was old and irrelevant at the time.  Four years on, it's even more
irrelevant.

en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml

@@ -2907,11 +2907,11 @@ File: +DESC (ignored)</screen>
 
         <answer>
           <para>With SCSI drives, the drive should be capable of re-mapping
-            these automatically.  However, many drives are shipped with
+            these automatically.  However, many drives ship with
-            this feature disabled, for some mysterious reason...</para>
+            this feature disabled.</para>
 
-          <para>To enable this, you will need to edit the first device page
+          <para>To enable bad block remapping edit the first device page
-            mode, which can be done on FreeBSD by giving the command
+            mode, which can be done by giving the command
             (as <username>root</username>)</para>
 
           <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>camcontrol modepage sd0 -m 1 -e -P 3</userinput></screen>
@@ -2921,87 +2921,15 @@ File: +DESC (ignored)</screen>
           <programlisting>AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld):  1
 ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld):  1</programlisting>
 
-          <para>The following paragraphs were submitted by Ted Mittelstaedt
+	  <para>Modern IDE drives also have bad block remapping
-            <email>tedm@toybox.placo.com</email>:</para>
+	    features in the controller, and they ship with this
+	    feature turned on.</para>
 
-          <para>For IDE drives, any bad block is usually a sign of
+	  <para>If you see warnings about bad blocks (on either type
-            potential trouble. All modern IDE drives come with internal
+	    of drive), it is time to consider replacing the drive.
-            bad-block remapping turned on. All IDE hard drive manufacturers
+	    You might be able to use the drive manufacturer's
-            today offer extensive warranties and will replace drives with
+	    diagnostic program to lock out those bad blocks, but at
-            bad blocks on them.</para>
+	    best this will buy you some time.</para>
-
-          <para>If you still want to attempt to rescue an IDE drive with
-            bad blocks, you can attempt to download the IDE drive
-            manufacturer's IDE diagnostic program, and run this against the
-            drive. Sometimes these programs can be set to force the drive
-            electronics to rescan the drive for bad blocks and lock them
-            out.</para>
-
-          <para>For ESDI, RLL and MFM drives, bad blocks are a normal part
-            of the drive and are no sign of trouble, generally. With a PC,
-            the disk drive controller card and BIOS handle the task of
-            locking out bad sectors. This is fine for operating systems
-            like DOS that use BIOS code to access the disk. However,
-            FreeBSD's disk driver does not go through the BIOS, therefore a
-            mechanism, bad144, exists that replaces this functionality.
-            bad144 only works with the wd driver (which means it is not
-            supported in FreeBSD 4.0), it is <emphasis>not</emphasis> able to be used with SCSI.
-            bad144 works by entering all bad sectors found into a special
-            file.</para>
-
-          <para>One caveat with bad144 - the bad block special file is
-            placed on the last track of the disk. As this file may possibly
-            contain a listing for a bad sector that would occur near the
-            beginning of the disk, where the /kernel file might be located,
-            it therefore must be accessible to the bootstrap program that
-            uses BIOS calls to read the kernel file. This means that the
-            disk with bad144 used on it must not exceed 1024 cylinders, 16
-            heads, and 63 sectors. This places an effective limit of 500MB
-            on a disk that is mapped with bad144.</para>
-
-          <para>To use bad144, simply set the <quote>Bad Block</quote>
-            scanning to ON in the FreeBSD fdisk screen during the initial
-            install. This works up through FreeBSD 2.2.7. The disk must
-            have less than 1024 cylinders. It is generally recommended that
-            the disk drive has been in operation for at least 4 hours prior
-            to this to allow for thermal expansion and track
-            wandering.</para>
-
-          <para>If the disk has more than 1024 cylinders (such as a large
-            ESDI drive) the ESDI controller uses a special translation mode
-            to make it work under DOS. The wd driver understands about
-            these translation modes, IF you enter the
-            <quote>translated</quote> geometry with the <quote>set
-            geometry</quote> command in fdisk. You must also NOT use the
-            <quote>dangerously dedicated</quote> mode of creating the
-            FreeBSD partition, as this ignores the geometry. Also, even
-            though fdisk will use your overridden geometry, it still knows
-            the true size of the disk, and will attempt to create a too
-            large FreeBSD partition. If the disk geometry is changed to the
-            translated geometry, the partition MUST be manually created
-            with the number of blocks.</para>
-
-          <para>A quick trick to use is to set up the large ESDI disk
-            with the ESDI controller, boot it with a DOS disk and
-            format it with a DOS partition. Then, boot the FreeBSD
-            install and in the fdisk screen, read off and write down
-            the blocksize and block numbers for the DOS
-            partition. Then, reset the geometry to the same that DOS
-            uses, delete the DOS partition, and create a
-            <quote>cooperative</quote> FreeBSD partition using the
-            blocksize you recorded earlier. Then, set the partition
-            bootable and turn on bad block scanning. During the actual
-            install, bad144 will run first, before any filesystems are
-            created (you can view this with an <keycombo
-            action="simul"><keycap>Alt</keycap><keycap>F2</keycap></keycombo>).
-            If it has any trouble creating the badsector file, you
-            have set too large a disk geometry - reboot the system and
-            start all over again (including repartitioning and
-            reformatting with DOS).</para>
-
-          <para>If remapping is enabled and you are seeing bad blocks,
-            consider replacing the drive. The bad blocks will only get
-            worse as time goes on.</para>
         </answer>
       </qandaentry>