Disks

To check for bad sectors check the SMART data, probably the best accessible by launching the Disks utility (Palimpsest). Even if you don't see any bad blocks there, launch a self-test to be sure.

The program is bundled in the gnome-disk-utility package. Run gksudo gnome-disks

Or in Ubuntu 16.04 version (3.18):

Badblocks

You can also use badblocks

sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sda

to just check, or to check and fix first write the result to a temporary file:

sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sda  > bad-blocks-result

sudo fsck -t ext4 -l bad-blocks-result /dev/sda1

will check the whole disk and print out all bad blocks encountered on /dev/sda.

From badblocks manual:

Important note: If the output of badblocks is going to be fed to the e2fsck or mke2fs programs, it is important that the block size is properly specified, since the block numbers which are generated are very dependent on the block size in use by the filesystem. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that users not run badblocks directly, but rather use the -c option of the e2fsck and mke2fs programs.

fsck

fsck itself will not help you find bad sectors, worse still, if there are a lot of bad sectors it can damage your data even more. Use it only when the disk is healthy.

fsck - check and repair a Linux file system. Invoke it using

fsck /dev/sda1

where /dev/sda1 is the drive you want to check. See 'man fsck' for more details.

There's also 'badblocks' command which checks a device for, you guessed it, bad blocks.

The drive need to be unmounted when checked, so to check the root partition you need to create a file 'forcefsck' in the root of the partition and reboot. The device will be checked upon the next boot:

sudo touch /forcefsck

sudo reboot

Alternatively, you can boot from a Live CD and run the check from there.

badblocks

You can check for badblocks running the command

1. 
   sudo badblocks -nsv /dev/[device-partition] > bad-blocks-result for a non-destructive read-write test. That will generate a file called bad-blocks-result with the sectors damaged.
   
   
   
   

   • 
     

     -n Use non-destructive read-write mode. By default only a non-destructive read-only test is done.

     
     

   
   

   • 
     

     -s Show the progress of the scan by writing out rough percentage completion of the current badblocks pass over the disk.

     
     

   
   

   • 
     

     -v Verbose mode.

     
     

   
   
   
   


2. Then, you can run sudo fsck -t ext3 -l bad-blocks-result /dev/[device-partition] to tell the file system where the bad sectors are and move data away from them, if possible.

You can find more reading about it here.

If you have a partition that you CAN NOT LOOSE THE DATA follow these steps

1. Determine which partition you want to check for bad sector using the

$fdisk -l commnd

Lets assume that the partition to check is called /dev/sdPTC (partition to check)
and that you have another partition to store the results mounted on /scan/resultPath/ folder

2.Then you can run this command

$sudo badblocks -v /dev/sdPTC > /scan/resultPath/badsectors.txt

which will determine what are the bad blocks of the given device and store them on a file called badsectors.txt

3. Now you can use fsck command to tell Ubuntu not to use the bad sectors mentioned in the badsectors.txt file.

$sudo fsck -l /scan_result/badsectors.txt /dev/sda

That way life of the hard disk is increased a bit until you get a new one for replacement.

If you have a complete partition that you want to check for bad physical sectors and you CAN AFFORD LOOSE ALL DATA on that partition or is EMPTY follow these steps

1. $sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility




2. $sudo gnome-disks




3. Check and double check that there is no important data on that partition




4. Using gnome-disks DELETE/REMOVE the partition by hand using the "-" sign




5. Using gnome-disks CREATE a new partition and select the "slow" option that will check the given space for errors