new to ubuntu

After I upgraded my desktop to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), I received an error message from Palimpsest that my hard drive has bad sectors and that I should backup and replace it. I noticed on ubuntuforums that other users were reporting similar messages. It has also been reported as a bug on launchpad.

I have System Mechanic 6 installed on my Windows XP partition. I ran the hard drive repair tool on both partitions and it did not mention anything about bad sectors or needing to replace the hard drive.

I have a Seagate hard drive and I installed Seatools. I ran the diagnostic tests and my hard drive passed.

Using Windows, I would defrag my hard drive frequently to improve performance. With a 200gb hard drive, it would take forever. But with Ubuntu, it isn’t necessary to defrag the hard drive. An article from geekblog explains how Ubuntu stores data differently than Windows.

Windows uses the FAT file system which stores files right next to each other so that they can be accessed quickly. But if any of the files increase in size, there is no room between the files to store the extra info. So the file is fragmented into two or more pieces in different places.

Linux uses the ext3 filsystem which spreads out files throughout the hard drive so that there is more space between files. This allows the files to increase in size without fragmenting.