Hi The machine in question has 2 hd's and the primary has windowsxp. Yesterday I installed Ubuntustudio on the secondary hd and during the process it came up that the primary hd had bad sectors. Well someone came over and installed ubuntu and I watched to learn. He mentioned that I could either isolate or disable the bad sectors so that the system doesn't write to them and I don't continue to have the problems I am having. As there was so much to do yesterday I didn't get a chance to ask more. Does anyone know of a way to do this or what he is talking about? "The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Chkdsk does that for Windows if you run it with the repair switch from a command prompt. For instance: chkdsk /r c: Go here for a tutorial: http://fixyourownpc.net/chkdsk.htm Chkdsk won't run on Ubuntu's file system (ext3 by default). In Linux, fsck does about the same thing. Read the man page for more (google it). If you're getting bad sectors, there's no telling how long that HDD will hold up. You should consider a replacement. I'd definitely be backing up my data on it. HTH www.computerselfdefense.com

Yeah I tried to run chkdsk and it only goes to about 50% and stalls. Stalling is one of the common problems with this machine...well the hd. It is not happening with the other drive that I have linux on so not I know it is not the other hard ware. I have only run chkdsk with windows not linux. I only installed linux on the secondary drive yesterday. Had problems with the windows drive for a while and the previous owner said she did too. Yeah I will think about a drive replacement but that is about it. Can´t afford a new hd and I also need a dvd burner as that has almost died. Ah well will wait. The other problem is affording windows. "The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Jeez, back up your data and replace the drive before you lose it. It'll probably be tough to even image (ghost) it in that state. www.computerselfdefense.com

I've found that chkdsk is not as reliable as the old win9X scandisk. You could check the hard drive manufacturer's web site and see if they have a diagnostic that will relocate bad sectors. But as Brokencrow suggests, it's probably a good idea to replace the drive. Once a drive starts getting new bad sectors, it's most likely on it's last legs.

Yeah I liked win98 scandisk. I never used anything in between....winxp is still foreign territory to me and I never did have win2000. OK will try the manufacturers website thanks. Unfortunately will have to try other things before I can get the cash. "The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Is this what I need to use http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/su... as a diagnostics or whatever....the drive is a seagate st320011a . Luckily I didn't have to open the box to find out. I remembered I installed 'Intel(R) Application accelerator' and that spits out a report on drives, os and pci info. Which download should I use from that site? Sorry it is not obvious to me.... "The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama