Linux disk test for errors and broken sectors

Switch directly to the root user:

sudo -i

Let’s see the list of disks:

fdisk -l
df -h

You can see the information and model of the disk as follows:

hdparm -i /dev/sda

If SMART is supported, install the utilities and see the SMART statistics:

apt-get install smartmontools
smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl -a /dev/sda|grep -i reallocated

Run SMART tests and view information (smartctl -X to stop the long test):

smartctl -H /dev/sda
smartctl --test=long /dev/sda
smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda

Now we will perform a disk check on the broken sectors (-s will display information about scanning, -v more detailed mode):

badblocks -sv /dev/sda1

You can save the result to a file:

badblocks -sv /dev/sda1 > ~/badblocks.list

You may need to unmount the disk to check:

umount /dev/sda1

You can run the test using e2fsck like this:

e2fsck /dev/sda1

See also:
Description of SMART attributes
Diagnostics HDD using smartmontools

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