Hiya, Found a passel of S.M.A.R.T. stuff for Linux/Unix/Mac. I think Bonnie++ is best for file systems (soft errors). ----- http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983 In this article, I explain how to use smartmontools' smartctl utility and smartd dæmon to monitor the health of a system's disks. See smartmontools.sourceforge.net for download and installation instructions and consult the WARNINGS file for a list of problem disks/controllers. Additional documentation can be found in the man pages (man smartctl and man smartd) and on the Web page. -----http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Prolly by now you can simply: $ man smartctl or $ man smartd Then when ya know what it does: $smartctl -a /dev/ "Gotchas" will be dependant on your specific USB implementation. USB used to be pretty dumb-and-confused with ATA or SCSI adapters. I should mention that mobo BIOS settings can also be shut off too. For some of the Linux distros I've installed, that's just a polite request. I happen to keep a couple of failing drives around just to reliably see the error messages. Some distros will blow up, some will give errors, but some, (Microsoft's) just work... (-: Chas.M. :-) Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:16:00 -0700 Subject: Re: Looking For Software to Check A Hard Drive From: mark@phillipsmarketing.biz To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Stephen wrote: Look for Bonnie++ its for hdd testing I found it, but I can't find a way to specify which hard drive to test. Based on reading the man page and some googleing, I think it only tests the drive with the root file system. I don't see an option to tell Bonnie to test a usb drive. If you know of one, please let me know. Mark On Dec 18, 2010 12:56 PM, "Mark Phillips" wrote: > I have an older hard drive (WD1200VE - 120 GB) that use to be in my laptop, > but I ran out of room so I replaced it with a larger drive. I have the > WD1200 in one of those nifty ez-upgrade USB drive enclosures and it mounts > and works just fine. I need some portable back up space, so I thought I > would use this drive. 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. > I am looking for either a command line tool or gui that I can run on a > Debian machine to exercise the drive and find any errors. An automated test > suite that I can setup and run in the background (ie does not suck up the > whole machine to run it) for a few hours/days to test the drive, log errors, > fix those errors that can be fixed, etc. Any recommendations? I don't care > about the data on the drive now, as I have sucked it all off to my new hard > drive. > > Thanks! > > Mark --------------------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------------------- 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