I have a Gateway 4530 laptop that I am trying to get to dual-boot with Ubuntu Linux and XP (it's currently running on WinXP). I originally tried the partition tool that came with the Ubuntu installation, but it never worked for me (it would encounter an error, and refuse to let me proceed without explanation).

I tried again with QTparted then. It won't let me proceed either, but it at least tells me why: bad sector. I was pretty surprised, seeing as Scandisk had never run into anything before and even running it now fails to detect any disk damage. Same with HDD regenerator. So far, the only programme beside QT to have found the bad sector was Spinrite, and it failed to repair it completely.

The HD is a FUJITSU MHT2080AT 80GB, most of which (60GB) is free space.

Anyway, my question is, what should I do to partition anyway? I know ntfs resizer has an option to partition in spite of bad sectors -- is it reliable, but also, how complicated is it to use, compared with QT? Any other options available?

Finally, would wiping the drive be of any help? As a last resort, I would be willing to do this, but I am not sure about the usefulness: the HD will still need to be partitioned even if I install Linux only, right?

Thanks very much much already,
EGR

qtparted is normally pretty good. If it's only one bad sector, you can certainly partition around it without difficulty. Just get the number and go into linux fdisk and use the option (might be on the "expert" menu) and convert the display to sectors. Calculate how and where you want your partitions and set them up accordingly.

Alternatively, assuming a typical *bloze installation where XP has comandeered your entire drive, is the bad sector expected to be inside the NTFS filesystem after you've resized it? If so, perhaps you can let *bloze deal with the problem. I should think ntfsresize would accomodate the bad sector by just working around it, and you won't have to deal with it at all. Just tell qtparted to resize it, and then use linux fdisk or cfdisk to create partitions after the end of your ntfs partition. Remember to create partitions only on even cylinder boundaries, for best results.

Randux, thanks for your reply.

Well, my problem is precisely that qtparted will not allow me to resize at all.

How do I get the `number' of the bad sector, though? When I ran Spinrite, it identified it as `Drive sector: 6,355,289-6,355,290'. I also tried to do the partition with GParted, and the error message I got was: `Bad cluster oxc1f23-oxc1f23 (1), cluster size 4096 bytes'. Is either one of those it?

EGR

Ok, I managed to do it. I used ntfsresize with the bad sector option,
and it worked like a charm. Almost done installing UbuntuLinux now.

Cheers,
EG

Great! Thanks for posting back.