On Sat, 4 Jul 2009, Carlos E. R. wrote:-
On Saturday, 2009-07-04 at 12:14 +0530, Jay Mistry wrote:
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