[ubuntu-in] Trying to install Gutsy, Gparted says bad

[Dinbandhu]

On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 00:46 +0530, Vishal Gaurav wrote:
> Hello,
> Thanks,
> You don't maintain here yet, Which brand make your hard disk.
> Are you downloaded tools from hard disk maker website.
> I don't figure out, why you having problems with g parted softwares.
> I was tried it in many many machines, some of them are old and some
> therm are new too.but i have never any problem with it before!.
> Ubuntu also uses this software for inbuilt partition tool.
> 
> Try another windows based software,Hope you get a chance. 

I downloaded the hardware diagnostics utility from Dell, and checked the
hard drive at great length last night. The utility found two bad blocks
on the drive: block # 5084681, and 5084682. The code of the error
(0F00:1A44) is for uncorrectable data error. No one at Dell technical
support could tell me how serious it is i.e. many people have such bad
blocks on their HD and it goes for many years like that; or instead that
it could be about to go bad altogether.

I wrote about my problem on the Parted Magic support form, and the
administrator replied:

"Windows misses bad sectors if you don't do a deep scan. The best
thing to do is to use the utility for the hard drive from the
manufacturer. To be 100% sure. You should be able to find it on the dell
web site.

I have never seen GParted say there was a bad sector if there really
wasn't.

Resizing a partition from the cli (command line interface) is easy. Read
the Parted Magic Doc while doing it."

At this point I guess I have two options. Keep the computer as is, and
try to shrink the partition using the gparted cli in Parted Magic. Or
call the person who sold me the computer and tell them to give me a
different one. I would unhesitatingly opt for the latter, but I don't
know how easy it will be to arrange. And I'm going to India in four days
and will be bringing the laptop to give it to someone. Anyhow, I'll call
the seller today and ask them. 

But I guess I'd have two questions at this point:
1. Does the defect on the HD sound serious? Or instead, incidental and
probably insignificant?
2. Are you familiar with using the cli (command line interface) in
gparted? Any tips for how to access it or use it?

Many thanks,
Swarup

P.S. The hard drive is listed in Device Manager as: "HTS548040M9AT00"