How to check bad sectors with the badblocks in specific range?

n00b_noob · 12-29-2021, 10:51 AM

Hello,
I have a HDD that has become to RAW and when I checked it with the TestDisk tool, then it showed me following information:

Code:

Disk /dev/sdc1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 15200 255 63
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
>* HPFS - NTFS              1 122 58  5577  58 49   89574400
 P HPFS - NTFS           5577  58 50 10357 206 25   76800000
 P HPFS - NTFS          10357 206 26 15200   2 34   77789952

I want to use the "badblocks" tool for scanning the first partition and not the whole disk. Is it possible?

Thank you.

jailbait · 12-29-2021, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by n00b_noob

Hello,
I have a HDD that has become to RAW and when I checked it with the TestDisk tool
I want to use the "badblocks" tool for scanning the first partition and not the whole disk. Is it possible?

Yes. When you specify the device to badblocks you are actually specifying a partition. Take a look at:

man badblocks

In DESCRIPTION the first line explains that you are specifying something like "/dev/hdc1" which is partition 1 on device hdc.

sundialsvcs · 12-30-2021, 10:15 AM

… and if you should find even one bad block, immediately retire the drive. They’re not expensive anymore. But your data is priceless.

n00b_noob · 01-01-2022, 01:10 AM

Hello,
Thank you so much for the reply.
As I said, the disk becomes to RAW and it just showed me one partition and when I used the TestDisk tool, then it showed me the partitions. I want to scan the first partition for the bad sectors and I used the following command:

Code:

$ sudo badblocks -svw -b 4096 /dev/sdc1 5577 1

Is it OK for scanning the first partition for the bad sectors?

jailbait · 01-02-2022, 03:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by n00b_noob

Is it OK for scanning the first partition for the bad sectors?

Yes, scan anything you want for bad blocks. Just don't let badblocks try to fix anything until you have a good knowledge of how much is bad and where the bad blocks are located.

Soadyheid · 01-03-2022, 07:54 AM

@sundialsvcs

Quote:

… and if you should find even one bad block, immediately retire the drive. They’re not expensive anymore. But your data is priceless.

I think I'd have to disagree with you there. Unless hard drive technology has changed dramatically since I gave up swapping dead ones out back in 2015, even a new drive is likely to have bad blocks on it. They're kept in a bad block file on the disk with the block marked as faulty and an alternate vectored address used instead. There used to be a couple of spare cylinders used for the re-vectoring process which, with the increase in size of disks these days, gives quite a large pool of spare blocks. ( I might actually mean spare sectors here, can't remember, getting old! Used to have to change the geometry on Maxstore drives sometimes to make them comply with the one we were replacing otherwise the RAID wouldn't rebuild.) The drive itself sorts out the re-vectoring in most cases without OS intervention.

One bad block does not mean the disk is on the way out... If the number of bad blocks increases over time, a short time that is, THEN it should be backed up and replaced. Keep monitoring if you're worried.

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