[lubuntu-users] Trouble installing 16.04 via live USB, hard drive prob?

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Wed Aug 10 16:55:40 UTC 2016


On 10 August 2016 at 18:33, Aere Greenway <Aere at dvorak-keyboards.com> wrote:
> Also, any 'bad-spots' detected during formatting (and excluded from file
> allocation) are included in that initially-used space.

This is true, but EIDE and SATA drives use Logical Block Addressing --
the on-drive circuitry remaps requests to actual blocks on disk. It is
normal in such drives that the drive itself detects and remaps bad
blocks, and drives reserve some spare capacity for such remapping.

This means that the OS should never see any bad blocks at all. The
drive should remap and hide them.

So, if any appear, it's because the drive has so many bad blocks that
all the reserve capacity has been exhausted. This almost always means
that the drive has severe physical damage to the medium, and as such,
is probably on the brink of failure.

Summary: if you format a drive and it reports any bad blocks at all,
don't use it. Replace it immediately. If it's new, get a warranty
replacement; if it's old, discard it.


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