[NBLUG/talk] Checking HD BEFORE installing Linux

[Lincoln Peters]

On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 09:41 -0800, Todd Cary wrote:
> I am having HD problems, or at least fsck is telling me so: it has not 
> been able to resolve the "short reads" after several tries.  I would 
> like to reformat the HD and I am not sure the best way to do that other 
> than put my Win98 floppy in the drive and use DOS commands.  Using Linux 
> utilities is my goal.
> 
> Suggestions?

To check your primary master hard disk for bad blocks:
badblocks /dev/hda
It will list any blocks that register as "bad" (the kernel may spew a
few errors to the console when it hits a bad blocks before badblocks can
say anything).

Also, what company manufactured your hard disk?  They might offer a free
diagnostic utility for it.

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
		-- Mark Twain