I have 661 GB ntfs partition and Vista installed on another partition. And Xubuntu 8.10 installed on another one.

Recently I found out that my 661 GB partition can't be mounted under Xubuntu:

sudo mount /dev/sda4 /D-disk
ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

I' ve checked this partition under Vista chkdsk D: /F /R. And only ONE bad cluster was found. My C: disk has 11 bad clusters and is mounted with no problem under Xubuntu so I think it isn't cluster problem.

How to solve the problem without reformatting 661 GB disk?

661 GB partition is absolutely workable under Vista. Under Xubuntu I use the latest version of ntfs-3g.

What do dmesg and the syslog say? Perhaps NTFS-3g ready the Bitmap in an other way than Vista and stumbles over another bad block.

Disks reserve 1-2% of the disk space as hidden to remap bad sectors to the good ones in the reserved area. This means if your disk has 83886080 sectors and chkdsk reports 1 bad sector then you have at least hidden(83886300/100) + visible(1) = 838864 bad sectors already. If the disk didn't die yet permanently then it's really time to replace it with a good, reliable one.