Ubuntu- check for bad sectors on system from GUI

Q: How to check for bad sectors on system from GUI

A: Goto "Disks" which is the program name you type into the Ubuntu search. Just type "disks." Once the Disks utility opens you should select your hard drive from the left pane. In the upper right corner of the interface is a gear icon that says "More actions" click that and choose SMART Data & Self-Tests (a feature available for any modern S.M.A.R.T. enabled IDE/SATA drive). This works with a drive having that technology and Ubuntu having it enabled. The "Overall Assessment will denote the number of bad sectors. Click "Start Self-test" to refresh. An Extended test may take about 10 minutes for a drive around 80-120gb.

To more thoroughly check for bad sectors and even mark them as bad you can drop to console. You can perfrom a read-only test while the fs is mounted.

$ sudo badblocks -v /dev/sda1 

To mark the bad blocks so that Ubuntu doesnt use them...

write the location of the bad sectors into a file.

$ sudo badblocks /dev/sda > /home/user/badblocks

Feed the file into the FSCK command to mark these bad sectors as "unusable" sectors.

$ sudo fsck -l badblocks /dev/sda