Re: Scandisk for Linux?

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 05:22:55PM -0600, Brune, Charlie wrote:
> Every once in a while, I run "scandisk" on my Windows machines. If I'm
> feeling particularly saucy, I'll even run scandisk in the "thorough"
> mode, where it will test the hard drive for bad sectors.
> 
> -- Is there an equivalent program in Linux?

fsck, or more specifically e2fsck.  You have to use the -c option to
get it to scan for bad blocks (using the program "badblocks").

Note that you can't run fsck on a filesystem that is mounted
read-write.  If you want to check a filesystem, you have to unmount it
(or mount it read-only).  Often (usually) this means dropping to
single-user mode (with "init 1" on a running system or adding "single"
to the kernel options in the boot loader).

> -- Is Linux continuously monitoring the health of my hard drive?
> 
> -- If Linux finds bad sectors, does it indicate that in a file somewhere.

The kernel will certainly complain loudly if it notices problems.
(See /var/log/messages.)

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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