HD Install :: No hard disc to install onto
There are several things you can do. Check your hard drive manufacturer's site for their recovery tools. There are probably more remapping tools available if you look around online.
This page has a link of manufacturer sites with the names of their recovery tools.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/29
This one has generic remapping info, suggesting (of course) you check the manufacturer's site:
http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/faq/05.01.shtml
And here's the SpinRite site. It's not cheap -- $89 for first time buyers -- but comes with a money back guarantee and works with Linux-oriented filesystems as well as FAT (live FreeDOS-based CD). I haven't ever used it because I've had pretty good success with the manufacturer utilities, but I know people who swear by it.
http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
One other thing I should've added: you can either use the badblocks command in e2fsprogs by itself (presuming you set up ext2) or as part of mke2fs (checks while installing new filesystem). The latter would probably be easier -- albeit more destructive (hopefully you backed up whatever you needed from the drive before committing to install in the first place) -- and you could edit the install script to do that if it needs it; I don't recall if Robert has the install script set with -c (read test for badblocks) at all, but unlikely -cc (read-write test). Depending how you choose to do it, it could only take a few minutes or a bit longer (I would want to make sure I have the bad blocks mapped out so I don't write data to them and end up with headaches down the road). You can also run it before the script if you want and then let the installation script run as normal. But my own preference would be to edit the script if it needs it. This presumes you're checking/formatting /dev/hda1.
just badblocks...
badblocks /dev/hda1
via mke2fs (read only test)...
mke2fs -c /dev/hda1
Or to be a little more cautious, do a read-write test...
mke2fs -cc /dev/hda1
You can throw in other flags if you want ext3 (-j for journaling), etc. See the manpages for e2fsprogs for more information.
It's probably in your best interests to first use a tool from the hard drive manufacturer. If you can detect that your blocks are limited to a certain area of the drive, it's fairly more involved using fdisk to create partitions around larger areas of bad blocks (which I've had to do on one hard drive thanks to playing around with an experimental operating system).
many thanks lucky13. I have to go away for a few days, but will crack on when I am back. I will post how I get on.
original here.