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I have 195 bad sectors that won't be moved to that reserve section on my HDD.

So how do I make the OS ignore them?

I've deleted all the partitions and tried to write over them, but...

I think I heard 'BadBlocks' fixes things like this, but I didn't know where to get it or even how to use it.

Can somebody help?

I don't care if it crashes completely in the near future; I just want it to work for now, so I can have a boot of Ubuntu to try out.

I'm confuse :c


I know the disk is bad. I just want the installation to keep on writing past the bad sectors. The disk is damaged and likely to fail in the near future. I just know it's functional enough to use for a month or two; but the install won't go. Maybe I should explain how the hard disk failed. My brother hit the side of the computer as hard as he could, which then fell off the desk with the hard disk running. Do I have to fix them via that process, or is there another way to get the install to keep on trucking past the bad sectors?

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    195 bad sectors are a lot. I'd replace the hard drive.
    – htorque
    Sep 24, 2011 at 21:14
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    Can you clarify "in the live CD?" Are you trying to install Ubuntu, or are you using the Live CD to try to recover a machine with disk errors, or ...?
    – poolie
    Sep 24, 2011 at 21:23
  • In the live CD installed to the USB drive, so the little OS it runs when you cancel out of the install. But yus I am trying to install it, it just keeps throwing up CAN'T WRITE PARTITION errors :c
    – Gwennifer
    Sep 24, 2011 at 21:47
  • :l I signed up so I could keep making comments and stuff in the live CD, but now it won't let me add comments, what do I do? D: Would this last answer work?
    – Gwennifer
    Sep 26, 2011 at 4:16
  • Where are you actually getting this message about bad sectors? What's the whole message?
    – poolie
    Sep 26, 2011 at 9:17

2 Answers 2

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You can run badblocks -sv /dev/sda to test the device, from the shell after the installer exits.

You can possibly check a box saying "scan disk for errors" before making the filesystem, and that may help it work around the problem.

If it doesn't, and if you really have 195 bad blocks, you are probably better off just buying a new disk. Even if you did get it to install, more might fail in future and then where would you be?

Drives of decent size start at only about $40 in the US, and not that much more outside. I've been a poor student too but it's not that much.

mke2fs, the command that is used to initialize the disk has a -cc option that checks the disk for errors and lays out the filesystem so that it won't use those blocks. If you check the "scan disk" option in the graphical or text mode installer, it ought to end up using that option, and then if there is any way to get this disk working, it will work. If that doesn't work (you should paste the exact errors) then the disk is probably unrecoverably bad.

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  • Does badblocks come with the live CD? It didn't want to work whenever I tried it :U I'm only 17; I can't afford a new disk.
    – Gwennifer
    Sep 25, 2011 at 23:05
  • I'm pretty sure badblocks is on the live cd. If it doesn't work, tell us more specifically what happens.
    – poolie
    Sep 26, 2011 at 0:44
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Get a new disk, and recover as much as you can. Here is a good tutorial.

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