Check disc
 

How can you check a hard dive in Linux?

Check the drive for what?

Check for bad sectors and mask them out in a similar fashion to Dos CHKDSK.

Linux filesystems usually have a tool to check them. You can't easily do that when booted normally. I'd boot to a live mint dvd and then run the tool for your filesystem.

What you say however is slightly different. Marking a block bad is not exactly the same deal.

Take a look at S.M.A.R.T tools to see your disk quality.

I've answered my own question. In Linux menu - Accessories - Disks - tools - SMART Data & self tests you get all the results including the no of sectors reallocated. So it seems as if sector reallocation is taking place as required. Since I had 1860 reallocated sectors the test gave an assessment of imminent failure which I suspected.