Looking For Software to Check A Hard Drive

[Dazed_75]

Any recent ubuntu (and probably others) has a Disk Utility under the
System/Administration menu which, among other things, will give you a
S.M.A.R.T. report.  It is also available on the LiveCD.

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 1:58 PM, ChasM Marshall <chasm750 at hotmail.com>wrote:

>  Hiya,
>   There's a pretty cool Windows tool in "SpeedFan" that uses S.M.A.R.T.
> data.
> S.M.A.R.T. enabled drives can report to the O.S. tons of run-time
> conditions.
> These get compared to statistics in SpeedFan's tables to predict and chart
> failures.
> The tables are stats amassed by the drive manufacturers and then built into
> SpeedFan's (upgrade-able) tables.
> Totally non-destructive.
>
>   I am not aware of any Linux equivalents.  But to be sure, they must be
> out there.
>
>   (-:  Chas.M.  :-)
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 13:26:47 -0700
> Subject: Re: Looking For Software to Check A Hard Drive
> From: mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
> To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Matt Graham <danceswithcrows at usa.net>wrote:
>
> From: Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
> > 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
>
>
>
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-- 
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
that I wish it always to be kept alive.
  - Thomas Jefferson
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