Installing around bad sectors

[Basil Chupin]

On 20/01/2011 14:49, 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.

What's the brand of your hard drive? Go to the manufacturer's web site 
and download the disc with the tools for that brand of HD. Run the disc 
and do a low level format of the HD. Doing so will automatically mark 
all the bad sectors on the HDs built-in 'management' system so that when 
you go to install Ubuntu those bad sectors will not be written to.

However, even as your HD now stands, the HD's built-in software should 
mark the bad sectors as bad when it tries to WRITE to a bad sector so 
that it will not be written to in the future. (The problem here is that 
if you have data on such a bad sector, before it went bad, the HD will 
read off it and the data may therefore be corrupt.)

Assuming that you are using Ubuntu (say 10.10) go to 
System>Administration>Disk Utility and then select your HD after which 
select SMART Data which will tell you the state of your HD and how many 
bad sectors you have and also tell you if your HD is really on the way 
out (look for text in RED).

BC

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