Marking bad sectors

[Jim Byrnes]

Tommy Trussell wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Jim Byrnes<jf_byrnes at comcast.net>  wrote:
>> I have a netbook with  a Crucial 64GB SSD in it.  There are some bad
>> blocks in the first GB of the drive.  Right now that is freespace. What
>> can I use to get them marked as bad?
>>
>> Having the freespace at the front or a least freespace with bad blocks
>> in it seems to be preventing me from install Ubuntu 9.10 on it
>>
>> Thanks,  Jim
>
>
> You have probably been hit by this real nasty bug that makes the SSD
> look bad (and in fact the blocks act bad until you "zero" them out).
> But you can recover from it.
>
> see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libatasmart/+bug/445852?comments=all
>
> There's a workaround in the description, but if you think you are
> affected by the bug, a more stable workaround is in comment 147 (or
> look at 160 if you find the wording of 147 confusing).
>
> We hope this will be fixed more properly in time for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid.
>

Thanks for the pointer to that bug. I will certainly work my way through 
the fix in comments 147 & 160 first thing in the morning.

I may be mis-reading it, but it sounds like it is referring to an add in 
SSD card.  I my case the SSD is the only drive in the system.  Regarding 
step number 4.  In my case the installer never finishes. It hangs at 95% 
with a message about a grub-install failure.

Despite those minor concerns this is something I will definitely try, as 
I am making no progress now.  The wipe recommended in step 2 may be 
enough to get me going.

Thanks again,  Jim