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/<your_drive>

"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 <cryptworks@gmail.com> 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" <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz> 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

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