How to Check Bad Sectors or Bad Blocks on Hard Disk in Linux

Aaron Kili

That said, below are the methods: Check Bad Sectors in Linux Disks Using badblocks Tool A badblocks program enables users to scan a device for bad sectors or blocks. Firstly, use the fdisk command with superuser privileges to display information about all your disk drives or flash memory plus their partitions: $ sudo fdisk -l Then scan your Linux disk drive to check for bad sectors/blocks by typing: $ sudo badblocks -v /dev/sda10 > badsectors.txt In the command above, badblocks is scanning device /dev/sda10 (remember to specify your actual device) with the -v enabling it to display details of the operation. You will need to employ e2fsck (for ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems) or fsck command with the badsectors.txt file and the device file as in the command below. ———— Specifically for ext2/ext3/ext4 file-systems ———— $ sudo e2fsck -l badsectors.txt /dev/sda10 OR ———— For other file-systems ———— $ sudo fsck -l badsectors.txt /dev/sda10 Scan Bad Sectors on Linux Disk Using Smartmontools This method is more reliable and efficient for modern disks (ATA/SATA and SCSI/SAS hard drives and solid-state drives) which ship in with a S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) system that helps detect, report and possibly log their health status, so that you can figure out any impending hardware failures. $ sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda10 The result above indicates that your hard disk is healthy, and may not experience hardware failures any soon.

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