First off, I've been using Linux Mint for about six months and I think it's absolutely brilliant. I currently run Mint 14 with the Cinnamon desktop, and I really like the setup. I'm getting pretty well-versed in the command-line, and I liking have the level of control that Linux offers above Windows.
My question concerns identifying and reallocating bad sectors on my hard drive. I've done a good amount of research and read up on a lot of related tools. My end goal is to use GParted to move a data partition in my hard drive to give 40 more gigabytes to my main Linux partition. Before moving the partition, GParted performs a read-only test, and it keeps encountering a IO error while doing this. It's obvious that I have a bad sector in that partition, so I want to reallocate it (I'm aware that I can't repair/fix it). The tools I started to use were Disks, smartctl, hdparm, and badblocks. I did a quick SMART test using Disks, and it failed. Disks does not seem capable of telling me exactly why it failed, so I ran "sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda" and among lots of other information, it gave me:
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SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 9056 529813637
# 2 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 9056 529813637
# 3 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 9056 529813637
# 4 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 9052 529801065
# 5 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 9052 529801065
# 6 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 9052 529801065
# 7 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 9052 529801065
# 8 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 9052 529802003
# 9 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 9052 529802003
#10 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 7167 -
#11 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6587 447167822
#12 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 6438 447166731
#13 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6438 447166731
#14 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6438 447166731
#15 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6438 447166731
5 of 14 failed self-tests are outdated by newer successful extended offline self-test #10
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/dev/sda:
reading sector 447166731: succeeded
My Linux partition is ext4, and it seems fine. The data partition which I wanted to move is formatted with NTFS because its data is also used by my Windows partition. Here's the specs on my hard drive, if it matters:
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sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.7.0-7-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Momentus 7200.4
Device Model: ST9320423AS
Serial Number: 5VH0YQAW
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 01c60c7c0
Firmware Version: 0002SDM1
User Capacity: 320,072,933,376 bytes [320 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is: Sun Feb 10 17:11:06 2013 MST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled