Marking bad sectors

[Tommy Trussell]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Jim Byrnes <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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

The third-party SSD card on my system REPLACES the existing card, and
a few people have found the OEM (manufacturer-supplied) SSD is bitten
by the bug.

It really is a nasty bug, and if you want to "test" for it, look in
some of the early comments when we were trying to pin it down. You can
immediately tell if it's a problem if you invoke the problematic
command.

The only reason I decided you were likely encountering the bug is
because others have seen the problem with a Crucial SSD. Of course
yours could be a different model from the same manufacturer that isn't
affected.

If you do find yourself affected by it, be sure to register for
Launchpad and click the button that says "this bug affects me." You
will probably want to know when/how it gets fixed.