Spatially coupled journals include information for every portion of physical media, including defective, or “bad”, blocks. Because data cannot be stored to bad blocks, a bad block table is needed before a solid state drive (SSD) can be accessed. Using the information already stored in the journals, the bad block table can be rebuilt following a loss of power. To ensure the journals can be located, a small seed can be stored in off band storage. The seed can include information pointing to a boot catalog stored on the SSD. The boot catalog can be used to determine the locations of journals, which may vary from their predetermined locations depending on the bad blocks of the drive. By storing a small seed, rather than an entire bad block table, the size of external storage needed to maintain the bad block table is reduced.