[plug] disk problems -fsck output, partitioning

[Daniel]

Hello All,
I experienced errors copying files to a 40g drive (copied files, but
would not create directories) and so did an fsck.ext3 /dev/hdb4 ... (it
wasn't mounted when fscking) only to find errors reported as below. 

Does this indicate the drive is 'on the way out'?

Could I have contributed to this by making partition sizes that were not
easily dealt with {not nice multiples like 64,128,512,1024}? (I used
1-swap 128mb, 2-ext3 650mb, 3-ext3 650mb, 4-ext3 30plus gig)

I have since repartitioned (128/512/512/>30g) and reformatted - then run
fsck -pvf with what seemed like all good results.

Any good suggestions on the drive and my approach would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Daniel.

---- examples of output -----
Error reading block 7962628 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read) while reading inode and block bitmaps.  Ignore
error<y>? no

fsck.ext3: Can't read an block bitmap while retrying to read bitmaps for
 /dev/hdb4
me:/mnt# fsck.ext3 -fp /dev/hdb4
Error reading block 7864326 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read) while doing inode scan.

/dev/hdb4: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
        (i.e., without -a or -p options)
me:/mnt# fsck.ext3 /dev/hdb4
e2fsck 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
/dev/hdb4 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Error reading block 7864326 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read) while doing inode scan.  Ignore error<y>? no

Error while scanning inodes (3939840): Can't read next inode
------------------------------------------