[opensuse] how to isolate bad blocks?

Dear List, I have an external 500 gb usb hard disk which I use for making backups. It seems to have some bad blocks.. when I am rsyncing files to it, I get error messages and it unmounts automatically (in dmesg: "kernel panic", etc.). I have tried the following: fsck.ext3 -v -f -y -c -c -C 0 /dev/sdb3 .. this should make a read/write test to the hard disk (it takes ages..!) and re-write the "bad block" inodes. Unfortunately, the program says finally: "could not allocate block in ext2 filesystem" .. How can I fix the hard drive and isolate the bad sectors? Regards, Sampsa -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org