[NCLUG] bad sector on backup disk, used as directory.

[John Gilmore]

My backup script complained that it can't remove the directory,
because it isn't empty.  Since it's garbage data anyway, I'd like to
trigger a write to force a sector re-allocation.

The only way that I can think of to do this is to poke into the file
structures using "debugfs".

Is there an easier way? If it was a file, I'd overwrite it with zeros.

 Here's what I've tried:

jgilmore at herbherb/localhost/home:)%cd
BeingDeleted.daily/jgilmore/Dwarf\ Fortress/data/save/region1
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1:)%
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1:)%ls
ls: reading directory .: Input/output error
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1 2 :(%
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1 2 :(%ls
ls: reading directory .: Input/output error
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1 2 :(%cd ..
jgilmore at herbDwarf Fortress/data/save:)%touch th
jgilmore at herbDwarf Fortress/data/save:)%ls
region1  th
jgilmore at herbDwarf Fortress/data/save:)%cd region1
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1:)%touch th
touch: cannot touch `th': Input/output error
jgilmore at herbdata/save/region1 1 :(%cd ..
jgilmore at herbDwarf Fortress/data/save:)%ls -lah region1
^C^Cls: reading directory region1: Input/output error
total 40K
drwxr-xr-x 3 jgilmore jgilmore  36K Sep  9 00:27 .
jgilmore at herbDwarf Fortress/data/save 130 :(%ls -lahdi region1
114458724 drwxr-xr-x 3 jgilmore jgilmore 36K Sep  9 00:27 region1
jgilmore at herbDwarf Fortress/data/save:)%

OK, Inode 114458724.