On Jan 6, 2008 4:04 PM, pol <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would like to re-use a physically crashed disk. My guess is that its > surface has been damaged. I would like to re-install debian (or kubuntu). > How is it possible to reformat the disk, without using the damaged area?
Basically, you can't do that with format. Or, you can do it, but you further risk your data. What I did in similar situation is, I found out where the bad blocks are (maybe the best source for this is the syslog), then I made two partitions using fdisk, but I left the damaged part of the disk unpartitioned, padded with, say, 50 megs before and after that part, because I heard that bad blocks can propagate if the hard drive head goes over those damaged sectors, so I guess it's the best if you keep them isolated in unpartitioned space. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]