Using Linux Mint 20.2 Uma, with a desktop computer.

I have bought a new external hard drive, which connects via USB. Before starting to use it to backup data I would like to check that there are not any physical faults in the physical disk media, so that I can return it and get a refund if it has. Even though the chance may be low, I would still like to check.

I would have expected to use "SMART data & self tests" in the menu of the Disks application, but that is greyed out and not available. The HD has been plugged in to the computer for the past two or three hours. The option to "benchmark disk" is available, but that is not what I want.

My question: is there another easy way to check/scan the external HD for physical errors?

Thanks.

1. Some unscrupulous dealers (Chinese) will format a hard drive with a false partition table that shows the advertised size rather than the actual size of the hard drive. To check this possibility format the file system. Then use gparted or something similar to make sure that the amount of space on the hard drive is equal to the advertised size of the hard drive.

2. Set up a loop to copy a large file over and over to the hard drive under different names until the hard drive is full. Check it with gparted again.

3. Set up a loop to copy all of the files on the hard drive to the bit bucket.

4. Format the hard drive again to get rid of all of the garbage. Check it with gparted again.

Not through a USB enclosure. Plug it directly in to your motherboard, and you should be able run the SMART tests.

Depending on manufacture the USB SATA bridge on modern USB external drives is soldered to the drive's electronics and not possible to plug it into a motherboard like a typical desktop drive. Some USB bridges are now supported by smartctl so you can try it from the command line and see what happens.

grumpyskeptic,

Your external drive should be shown under Disks.

What is showing for Mode, Assessment and Size?

Did you actually install SMART?

Find the name of your external drive (NOT sda) which may be sdb or sdc etc.

Let's call it sdc.

To run an Extended test (about 55 minutes):


To display output (after 55 mins or so):

Quite true. I'd bet, though, that it's just a SATA drive plugged in to a bridge adapter, and you can just unplug it from the enclosure.

Depending on drive's capacity, test described below will take a long time, e. g. > 1 d for a 4 TB drive. Therefore use your second computer for this test if possible. USB 3.0 or higher is highly recommend.

1. Unplug all other SSDs/HDDs from the system. Your plugged new USB drive will become /dev/sda
2. Start a recent live Linux, e.g. Knoppix or grml, without GUI (Knoppix command line for start without GUI: knoppix64 2 noswap)
3. Run on console: badblocks -wsv /dev/sda    # This do a read-write test and wipes all data incl. any partition tables on /dev/sda.
4. If badblocks throws errors return this drive. Otherwise …
5. … run fdisk or another partitioning tool and create desired partitions and filesystems.

I cannot find Mode, Assessment, or Size within Disks 3.38.2, not even for my internal HD. Where would I find them please?


"SMART Data & Self Tests" is an entry in the Disks menu, so I assume SMART is installed. It is greyed-out for the external HD, only available for the internal HD.

It seems the answer probably is that there is no easy way to check the external HD.

Thanks to all replies.

1 members found this post helpful.

In the gsmartcontrol package, as you were advised to load. Did you??
Aside from (as suggested) opening the USB enclosure and looking at what's in there. Because there are three options:

1. Hard-drive soldered to the wiring
2. Hard drive plugged in to a USB adapter (good chance)
3. Cheap knock-off, and you bought a USB flash drive in a case

meaning:

• Cannot test further
• Can easily test by plugging it in
• Cannot test further, but no need, since you should return it.

I now realise that Assessment is one of the "SMART Data & Self Test" spreadsheet columns in Disks.

I did install GSmartControl. For the external HD it says "Unknown model", "SMART status: Unsupported".

On the other hand Disks gives the correct model and size for it, but the "SMART Data & Self Test" in the Disks menu is greyed out and unusable.

...which takes us full-circle, back to "open up the USB enclosure and proceed from there".

It will *STILL* fall in one of the three options previously given to you. Until you do something and look, not sure what else you think can be done. Smart is telling you, explicitly, that it cannot perform diagnostics via that USB adapter. So either you can remove it from the equation or not, and you won't know until you look.

Rule of thumb: SMART doesn't work over USB.