Hi, Am Samstag, 4. Juli 2009 08:44:23 schrieb Jay Mistry:

Will 'badblocks' be able to check Windows (FAT32, NTFS) file systems as well as ext3 ?

I think that badblocks only checks read and write access to every block on the disk without changing it, so it should be filesystem independant. But, I'm not an expert.

Can it be run off a Live CD, and which Live CD has it ? (I tried PCLinux OS 2009, but it was not there).

Try Knoppix? Karl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sat, 4 Jul 2009, Carlos E. R. wrote:-

On Saturday, 2009-07-04 at 12:14 +0530, Jay Mistry wrote:

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badblocks is the name for the program that checks for bad bocks :-)

Karl

Will 'badblocks' be able to check Windows (FAT32, NTFS) file systems as well as ext3 ?

Yes. It only checks, it does not repair or remap.

It'll do a read-only test, a non-destructive write test, or a destructive write test. With the two write-tests, if it finds a bad sector and the drive has spare sectors available to remap, the drive itself will do the remapping. The non-destructive write test means it reads what's there on the drive, writes it back and checks it's written back properly, and so doesn't wipe the data. The destructive write test is more thorough, filling each sector of the drive with the values 0x55 0xaa 0xff and 0x00 in turn, checking that they are the same on read. End results is a completely wiped drive and, as with the non-destructive write-test, if the drive is able to do so, the spare sectors should be used to map out the bad ones.

The format is irrelevant, even if it does not exist. Read the manual. For repairing/remaping you need manual action with different tools.

I don't bother with other tools, except maybe the manufacturers drive test and formatting tools. If I find bad sectors on a drive that the drive itself can't remap, it means that it's run out of unallocated sectors to use in place of the bad sectors and that the number of bad sectors is likely to get worse. I'll use the manufacturers tools and, if that comes up saying the drive is bad, it gets replaced.

There are also the SMART tests, using smartctl, or the utility from the manufacturer. Format is irrelevant, and can be tested "live".

And those tests can take considerably less time than a run through with badblocks. Only problem is it doesn't test the drive surface, but does tell you if the drive thinks it's failing. Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: http://www.distributed.net/ OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s openSUSE 10.3 32b | openSUSE 11.0 32b | | openSUSE 10.3 64b | openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | RISC OS 3.6 | RISC OS 3.11 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | TOS 4.02 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sat, 4 Jul 2009, Carlos E. R. wrote:-

On Saturday, 2009-07-04 at 18:29 +0100, David Bolt wrote:

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There are also the SMART tests, using smartctl, or the utility from the manufacturer. Format is irrelevant, and can be tested "live".

And those tests can take considerably less time than a run through with badblocks. Only problem is it doesn't test the drive surface, but does tell you if the drive thinks it's failing.

It depends on the manufacturer and the date; seagates do.

I think we may not be thinking about the same thing here. I was thinking about the SMART tests when I said they don't do a surface scan. I know the manufacturers utilities do because I've used a couple of them. The last on a 200GB Maxtor that decided to die very nastily just outside its warranty period. Even using the utility to reformat the drive didn't help and, after it complained that the drive had failed, it was totally disassembled and trashed. As for what happened with that drive, after several system crashes I looked into what was going on with it and found there were several hundred sectors that had gone bad and weren't able to be re-mapped. These bad sectors were smack bang in the middle of the swap partition, and within 2GB of the start of the drive. As the system occasionally used a large amount of swap, sometimes it would try reading/writing to one of these bad sectors and would result in a crash. Sometimes it was just the application that died, and sometimes it brought the system down. Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: http://www.distributed.net/ OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s openSUSE 10.3 32b | openSUSE 11.0 32b | | openSUSE 10.3 64b | openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | RISC OS 3.6 | RISC OS 3.11 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | TOS 4.02 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Carlos E. R. wrote:-

On Sunday, 2009-07-05 at 00:10 +0100, David Bolt wrote:

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I think we may not be thinking about the same thing here. I was thinking about the SMART tests when I said they don't do a surface scan.

Right. But, for example, the seagate drives I have bought since two or four years back do run a surface test as part of the smart tests done by the HD firmware.

I looked into it a bit more and was mistaken. They do indeed do a surface scan as part of the long test.

It is easy to notice because they take about two hours to test, and the system becomes highly unresponsive during that time (too busy). I only know it is a non destructive test, but I don't know if it is read only or read/write.

I don't know. I think it's possibly a read test but aren't sure. According to the post here: URL:http://www.technutopia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1266 it's a read-only surface scan. Now all I have to do it take the foot back out of my mouth, and be ready for the next time I try it on for size. Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: http://www.distributed.net/ OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s openSUSE 10.3 32b | openSUSE 11.0 32b | | openSUSE 10.3 64b | openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | RISC OS 3.6 | RISC OS 3.11 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | TOS 4.02 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Jay Mistry writes:

Are there any tools (Linux programs run from Live CD's) available that will check for & _repair_ (or re-allocate automatically) bad sectors ?

Not exactly. However, you can use the "-c" option in e2fsck for ext2/3. This will invoke "badblocks" automatically and use the info to mark the blocks that are bad. For dosfsck, try the "-t" option. Please read the manpages. Charles -- The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. (Arno Schaefer's .sig)