Can't install RH9 because of BAD BLOCKS??? WTF?!?!

[Guest SDMF]

Twice now I have tried to install RH9, spending a good amount of time selecting specifically which packages I want (I really wish there was an option like in Mandrake where you could save all your package selections to a floppy), and both times, after a bad block check, I have gotten an error that there are bad blocks on hda5 (my "/" partition) and the install has halted, rebooting the computer. I thought Disk Druid was supposed to format the damn things, since I told it to.

 

My old partitions were as follows:

/dev/hda1 - FAT32 (Windows)

/dev/hda5 - ext2 - /

/dev/hda6 - swap

/dev/hda7 - ext2 - /home

 

I removed hda5 through 7 and created new partitions (to allow for a larger /), and so now the partition table looks like this:

/dev/hda1 - FAT32 (Windows)

/dev/hda5 - ext3 - /

/dev/hda6 - swap

/dev/hda7 - ext3 - /home

 

Notice I also selected to use ext3 as the filesystem on my linux partitions. This is pretty lame, IMO, to have the entire install halt when bad blocks are found, rather than trying to repair them. I don't think these bad blocks existed before, because Mandrake was frequently scanning every 14 or 21 mounts and I hadn't seen any problems until now. Is there any way to get around this problem? Until then I am stuck on Windows since this RedHat install has erased my old partitions.

[Cannonfodder]

Try deleting your extended partition and recreating. Since you are wiping it, it shouldn't matter. Or you could try formatting the partition manually on your own before running the red hat installer.

[Guest tezca]

I agree you may have to actually reformat those partitions (linux only) as one partition twice, since actually you are not really eraseing anything untill it is done over twice, sounds funny I know but its true, If you partition a drive enough times you may be able to notice "some things being left over" I have quite a few times

 

best bet is to boot single from the cd and use Fdisk to make your partition/s and then try again, or use fdisk to make a fat partition, boot into windows and format the drive and then do a reinstall of linux

 

also what version of windows are you using, if its XP then perhaps thats why I alot of people have problems with XP and another OS like Linux shareing the drive, especially when installing new software on XP after Linux is installed and working fine.

[Guest SDMF]

I went in using a boot disk and used fdisk to format them, and it worked.