On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Matt Graham wrote: > From: Mark Phillips > > I have an older hard drive (WD1200VE - 120 GB) However, I would like > > to test it (thoroughly, whatever that means) to see if it has any > > problems before I use it as a backup drive. > > If you don't care about the data on the disk, plug it in, then in an xterm > or > konsole or screen session, run "badblocks -s -w -o badblocks.out > /dev/sdd1", > replacing sdd1 with whatever disk and partition# the drive shows up as. > This'll do a destructive read/write test on all sectors of the device. It > will tie up the device, but all the other devices will remain usable, since > Linux does multitasking pretty well in most cases. You could add "-p 1" to > make it do 2 passes if you really want to check it out. If it does find > bad > blocks, you can pass the badblocks.out file to mke2fs's -l option, which > could > keep things usable. > Sounds good...will this also exercise the hardware enough to see if it has become flaky over the years? I have used floppy based drive testers that run for hours/days that also report if the drive is flaky over time with a lot of usage. I guess I will need to reformat the drive once this test is done....correct? Or does it put the original data back? > > Make sure you get the device name right. > Hmmmm..."measure twice, cut once" is my motto, and I usually only have a few scraps left over. It would be funny, in a sad way, to get the wrong drive....... Thanks! Mark > -- > Matt G / Dances With Crows > The Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/ > There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see > > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >