Is there a way to "hide" bad sectors on USB drives?

[The Cool n00B]

I have this USB drive. It's my biggest one, coming in at a whopping 5GB(!). Anyway, I was going full retard on it a while ago and formatted it about, I wanna say, 20 times. Within the same day. Don't ask why, it's a long story. Point is, the manufacturer clearly used shitty flash chips because it now has bad sectors. My question is... hold on, I'll make a new paragraph to make this more obvious.

 

My question is, is there a way to "tape off" the bad sectors so that programs, specifically a Linux Mint installer can't see and will just "jump" over the bad sectors? 

[Godlygamer23]

Have you tried repairing the bad sectors? By reducing the number of usable sectors, that also means you'll be reducing the amount of space you have, and depending on the number of them, you'll never see it on your total available space.

[Jarsky]

You could get a new flash drive? 8GB drives are only a couple of dollars

Theyre so cheap, you can even buy them in packs for $15 http://www.amazon.com/mosDART-Flash-Drive-Swivel-Drives/dp/B01DI1XO4G

[Godlygamer23]

5 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

You could get a new flash drive? 8GB drives are only a couple of dollars

Theyre so cheap, you can even buy them in packs for $15 http://www.amazon.com/mosDART-Flash-Drive-Swivel-Drives/dp/B01DI1XO4G

Doesn't mean they're reliable or fast. 

[Jarsky]

4 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Doesn't mean they're reliable or fast. 

Didn't say they were? He just mentioned his largest thumb drive is 5GB and already has bad sectors. 

Why not fix 2 problems at the same time - the faulty thumb drive, and having some larger capacity ones - they always come in handy.

[Godlygamer23]

13 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

Didn't say they were? He just mentioned his largest thumb drive is 5GB and already has bad sectors. 

Why not fix 2 problems at the same time - the faulty thumb drive, and having some larger capacity ones - they always come in handy.

The problem may repeat with a poor quality flash drive. 

[Jarsky]

Just now, Godlygamer23 said:

The problem may repeat with a poor quality flash drive. 

 

But then you have 5 of them, which makes them cost effective still if its a failure rate even as high as 1%.

You can get a Kingston/SanDisk one for $5

e.g http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SOL9ZSA/ref=twister_B00UVS0V5K

 

Point was more that replacing low capacity thumb drives these days is inexpensive.

[The Cool n00B]

23 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Didn't say they were? He just mentioned his largest thumb drive is 5GB and already has bad sectors. 

Why not fix 2 problems at the same time - the faulty thumb drive, and having some larger capacity ones - they always come in handy.

I usually use my phone's micro SD as one, since TWRP has an option to do so.

 

On 5/4/2016 at 4:45 PM, Godlygamer23 said:

Have you tried repairing the bad sectors? By reducing the number of usable sectors, that also means you'll be reducing the amount of space you have, and depending on the number of them, you'll never see it on your total available space.

I vaguely remember trying to do this to no avail.