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    ubuntu noob: scan disk for errors?

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by osomphane, Oct 4, 2009.

  1. osomphane

    osomphane Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm sort of a newbie and my netbook fell from the table on a carpet floor. Didn't hear a scratching noise, but don't know if the drive was reading at that time or not.

    Anyway, I ran an fsck check on my data partition and it didn't say there were errors (don't recall it saying there were no errors either though). What are the chances I have something damaged? Does fsck scan free space as well? Is there a tool that can scan hard drives for bad sectors even on mounted partitions?

    When I install Ubuntu 9.10 at the end of the month (clean install), will it scan the hard drive before installing?
     
    osomphane, Oct 4, 2009
    #1
  2. Thomas

    Thomas McLovin

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    Does your netbook have an HDD or SSD?
     
    Thomas, Oct 4, 2009
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  3. timberwolf

    timberwolf Notebook Consultant

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    I wouldn't really know what to run, fsck and/or smartmontools.

    For the ext3 filesystem (I'm assuming you are using the default?), check the man page for fsck.ext3. Scanning the disk for errors with -c for a read-only test or -cc for a non-destructive read-write test, you'll probably also need to use the -f to force a check. You normally need the filesystem to be umount-ed although you might be able to do the test to a read-only mounted filesystem. The root / filesystem, is more difficult to test, best method is to boot from external media (CD/DVD or USB), or you may be able to do it from a maintenance login (single user) if you can remount the partition read-only.

    A nice newbie intro to smartmontools:

    http://blog.shadypixel.com/monitoring-hard-drive-health-on-linux-with-smartmontools/
     
    timberwolf, Oct 4, 2009
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  4. osomphane

    osomphane Notebook Evangelist

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    osomphane, Oct 4, 2009
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  5. Enunes

    Enunes Notebook Consultant

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    Oh and don't really ignore the warning which tells you not to run fsck on a mounted partition.

    I ignored it last time and suffered, as it states, "several filesystem damage". I lost some days' data and the filesystem damage was really hard.
    This was some (2-3) weeks ago btw, it took an afternoon I couldn't afford to spare also... :(

    *Do* unmount the partition before running fsck! (run it from a live-cd?)
     
    Enunes, Oct 4, 2009
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  6. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    If you're running Ubuntu, just open a terminal and type
    Code: 
    sudo touch /forcefsck
    Then reboot. That will run fsck on your filesystem on the next boot, so it's not running against a mounted partition. It will only run once, though. It's not a permanent "fsck every time I boot" command, so you can be pretty safe in running it.
     
    Pitabred, Oct 5, 2009
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