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I have a drive with bad blocks. The filesystem is aware of them, and I read that you can feed e2fsck with a badblocks repport to inform the file system that there are some bad blocks. (I think the option -c in fsck is doing the same thing.)

If I format the partition and get rid of the file system, so is all information about bad blocks lost? Need I inform the new file system about bad blocks? Or will the SMART system do so for me?

Thanks!

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From the vastcough amount of research I've come across in the last five minutes, for instance this and this (from SU.SE), it would appear that device-wide metadata about bad blocks is stored in the Master Boot Record or GUID Partition Table (the disk's partition table that starts at address 00000000: 0x00).

It seems unlikely it would be stored in the partition's filesystem's table of contents. Anyways, the information will only go away if you write the disk a new partition table, which will irreversably destroy all data on the entire disk.

If you're using a disk that has bad blocks for anything remotely mission-ciritical (or even your own data), that disk is bound to fail irreparably in the near future, and it's cheaper and easier and safer to buy a new disk.

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