How can I "ignore"a dying hard drive?

[Roby]

Scott (angrykeyboarder) wrote:

> I've got 4 identical internal drives (Maxtor 7Y25050 - 250 GB SATA
> 1.5GB/s - if anyone cares).
> 
> One of them is dying and has been for some time.
> 
> I've not been in the position to replace it. That will hopefully change
> next week when I come into some funds.
> 
> Weeks ago I was in Windows and was warned the drive was dying (which
> made sense cuz it suddenly gotten *very* slow with I/O. It was
> NTFS-formatted and used for storage only. Luckily it was empty at the
> time.
> 
> So now the drive is completely unformatted and not being used. Windows
> seems to be able to live with that just fine but Ubuntu is another story.
> 
> Every time I boot I get one or more of the following:
> 
> 1) A console screen full of I/O error gibberish (why I don't know the
> drive is not formatted at all).
> 2) Usplash starts and barely moves along. After a few minutes I'm either
> thrown to the console (see above) or I actually end up at (finally!) the
> GDM.
> 3) Usplash starts, barely moves along (maybe 1/10 of the way) and after
> a few minutes I'm back at a completely blank console screen with a "__"
> flashing cursor.
> 
> In all cases but #2, I have to restart the computer only to have the
> same thing happen again. However *eventually* (after anywhere from say
> 3-10 tries) I manage to arrive at the GDM.
> 
> Yes, I know I should just replace the offending drive, but it's a
> lack-o-funds thing, combined with unexpected expenses.
> 
> But it seems to me if Windows can ignore this drive, then Ubuntu should
> be able to also.
> 
(snip)
Remove the failed drive's partition(s) from /etc/fstab.  Easy, no?