Installing around bad sectors

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Wed, 2011-01-19 at 21:49 -0600, Anthony Papillion wrote:
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> So a part of my hard disk is basically toast. I don't thin it's a huge
> area but at least some of it is. Right now, my local computer store is
> telling me it will be 4-5 days before they can get a new one so I'm
> thinking about reinstalling and working around the bad areas.
> 
> Is there a way to do this? If I reinstall Ubuntu, can I tell it to route
> around the bad sectors and not access them once the machine is in use? I
> think the boot sector is bad.

mke2fs has a bad block option. (-c) which will map out the bad blocks in
software with the badblocks tool.  I have used it with some success in
the past.  I think you can invoke it if you tell the installer you want
to manually create your filesystem(s).  If the bad area is physically
limited, you might consider creating disk partitions which do not
include the area around the bad sectors.  Read the badblocks manually
page very carefully.  You can irrevocably destroy data with this tool.

-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
voice: +1 480 922-7313
cell: +1 602 421-9005
smoot at tic.com