[CVALE] Palimpset Disk Utility: "Disk Has Many Bad Sectors"

[Grant Bowman]

> A couple of weeks ago I installed Ubuntu on my Dell Vostro 1500 laptop.
> I'm dual booting it with Windows XP. I used GParted to resize the
> original hard drive partition, which was all being used by Windows XP.
> This made room for the Ubuntu installation.
>
> Every time I boot into Ubuntu, the Palimpset utility is warning me that
> I have "many bad sectors" on my hard drive. However, I ran the check
> disk utility in Windows XP and detected no problems on that part of the
> hard disk. Could it be that the warning from Palimpset is not valid? Or
> is Windows check disk missing something? This is a fairly new laptop
> (only about a year old). Am I really about to loose my hard drive?
>
> I attached a screenshot of the error I am getting.
>
> Thanks for the suggestions.
>
> Landon
>
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Hi Landon,

Which version of Ubuntu?  Karmic 9.10? Could this bug be related to your issue?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libatasmart/+bug/438136

That bug has several links in it that describe more false positive
results.  What brand and model of disk are you using?  If it's a
seagate you can try their SeaTools.  Comment #54 recommends hutil if
it's a hitachi.  How many bad sectors are being reported in various
tools you are trying?  Comment #43 has an example of smartctl to get
more information. Comment #62 has a good description as do some
others. Near the end are links to some upstream bugs.

Grant Bowman