I left my computer running last night with Firefox 1.0 open and this morning it was totally hung. I couldn't do anything, and had to turn the machine off.

Upon reboot, I get an error saying a have a bad block and need to manually fix. (They suggest I get a new HD - which I will probably do - but I want to get the machine running again to get the data off.) It puts me into a Bash mode after asking for password.

I ran reiserfsck --check /dev/hda7 (the place where the error first shows - gave a report filesystem not clean - error code 6) and get a response saying that I have a bad block at 6491. I tried reiserfsck --fix-fixable on the dev, but it just goes back to the Bash. I tried rebooting but I get the same error. I also tried reiserfsck --rebuild-sb, but no luck

It suggests that I write to the bad block. What does that mean? Or better - how do I do this?

I decided to check another logical drive - /dev/hda6 - and it is chugging along with no error yet, but it is taking a long time. Seems to be no problem there - yet.