ZG5 Not booting, suspect SSD, replace?

Guys, my AA1 ZG5 isn't booting, in all honestly it had this problem before but I just dumped it in a drawer and forgot about it, I've now decided I should try and sort it out.

Trying to boot as normal I'm met with the post screen then simply a blinking underscore/hyphen for ages which doesn't move to anything else.

I've got an external CD drive which I can boot from, I just burnt the most recent version of Ubuntu, after an age this live CD does load and I'm able (very) slowly to navigate around Ubuntu.

I tried to install since there's nothing on the 8gb SSD I need and I ran into an error:

input/output error during write on /dev/sda

Ignoring this produced this error:

error fsyncing closing dev sda input output error

After this the install had enough with my brute force methods and took me back to the 'where to install' screen. I tried again and the same happened. I then looked to the 'advanced' side of the partitioning within the installer, I reformatted the near on 8gb of space to EXT4 journaling with / as the mount point. This also failed to install.

It seems to me that the SSD is knackered. Does anyone agree? Is there a more conclusive way I can tell (would SeaTools for DOS boot up from CD and scan the SSD?)

Now, on to the replacement option! - I've got a very old Creative Zen Touch which has a broken touch pad (but not hdd as far as I know). This is a 20gb Hitachi Travelstar 1.8" drive, which I'm thinking should fit into the AA1?

The replacement of the drive looks a little scary but I've not got much to lose here and if I take it slow I'm sure it will be okay.

If I successfully replace it...

1. How will I know?!
2. How can I install Ubuntu (just for instance). Will it work just going through the graphical installer as you would for Windows or do I need to start getting involved with Linux properly?!

Any help much appreciated, I'm trying to recycle what's just taking up drawer space to watch some stuff on during a long car journey in about 10 days time!

Thanks!!

 

As you described a blinking underscore/hyphen indication, is windows or the operating system missing the boot info.


Turning on the computer and pressing F2 should still allow the motherboard settings screen to show. If this is the case then use a reinstall or system recovery disk.


Can you still recover acer erecovery by pressing ALT AND F10 together.


If not a reformat may be required if you have lost the acer recovery sector on the harddrive.


This program will help, if you chose to reformat


http://www.freewarefiles.com/Super-Fdisk_program_44285.html


After formatting just load your ubuntu or other systems cd


Also see the forum ssd section for setting it up.

 

The operating system would have been Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

F2 on boot does indeed show the bios screen, I can see the HDD model number and serial number, I'm not sure quite what this proves though.

Alt F10 doesn't seem to do much, there's a chance I wiped this out when installing Ubuntu netbook remix I guess.

My concern is that the HDD is faulty, in which case installing another OS is pointless, would the errors I got trying to install Ubuntu from a live CD not point to the HDD being faulty?

 

The F2 boot was to see that the boot sequence from the motherboards aspect was functioning. a clean format will check the drive. first delete the drive with super fdisk and create a new fat 32 partition. then format with the superfdisk cd. it's after this using super disk additional tools, then carry out a disk surface function test scan.

then if alls right put what sysyem on you want