Is there a good FreeBSD HDD diagnostic program?

The SATA III disk drive I'd like to test is either partially failing or
has corrupted data. MS Win10's "repair" of the drive isn't fixing it.
For that and other reasons, I suspect the drive has partially died
(such as maybe 1 head died or something).

In any case, I'd like to test it while preserving the data on it.
E.g., read a block and save its content, write 0101s, verify 0101s,
write 1010s, verify 1010s, write back original content, verify, print
map of what failed.

It's maybe not all that hard to write such a program, but there are
probably things like disabling low-level retries and any FreeBSD
caching I know less about.

In any case, is there such a diagnostic?

TIA,
-WBE

I should add: yes, I discovered recoverdisk(1) which looks like a good
way to copy the disk if I've bought a replacement.
-WBE

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 11:29:45 -0400, Winston wrote:

> Is there a good FreeBSD HDD diagnostic program?
>
> The SATA III disk drive I'd like to test is either partially failing or
> has corrupted data. MS Win10's "repair" of the drive isn't fixing it.
> For that and other reasons, I suspect the drive has partially died
> (such as maybe 1 head died or something).
>
> In any case, I'd like to test it while preserving the data on it.
> E.g., read a block and save its content, write 0101s, verify 0101s,
> write 1010s, verify 1010s, write back original content, verify, print
> map of what failed.
>
> It's maybe not all that hard to write such a program, but there are
> probably things like disabling low-level retries and any FreeBSD
> caching I know less about.
>
> In any case, is there such a diagnostic?
>

Look in /usr/ports/sysutils. There are several tools such as
smartmontools, hdrecover, recoverdm, etc.

--
steve

On 15.08.2024 um 11:29 Uhr Winston wrote:

> Is there a good FreeBSD HDD diagnostic program?
>
> The SATA III disk drive I'd like to test is either partially failing
> or has corrupted data. MS Win10's "repair" of the drive isn't fixing
> it. For that and other reasons, I suspect the drive has partially died
> (such as maybe 1 head died or something).

First, create an image of your disk NOW if you need anything that is
still on your disk. Next time create an automatic backup, so you don't
depend on such tools.

badblocks can use a read-only mode and also a non-destructive write
mode. Be aware: Your disk can fail at any time, don't do more
experiments without a backup than needed.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1723714185muell@cartoonies.org

I originally asked:
>> Is there a good FreeBSD HDD diagnostic program?

>> The SATA III disk drive I'd like to test is either partially failing
>> or has corrupted data. MS Win10's "repair" of the drive isn't fixing
>> it. For that and other reasons, I suspect the drive has partially died
>> (such as maybe 1 head died or something).

to which Marco Moock <mm+usenet-es@dorfdsl.de> kindly replied:
> badblocks can use a read-only mode and also a non-destructive write mode.

"badblocks"? 'pkg rquery %n badblocks' finds no such program.
-WBE

On 16.08.2024 um 10:10 Uhr Winston wrote:

> "badblocks"? 'pkg rquery %n badblocks' finds no such program.

I haven't checked, but here it is listed:
https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=badblocks&apropos=0&sektion=&manpath=freebsd-ports&format=html#end

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1723795813muell@cartoonies.org

On Fri, 16 Aug 2024 16:20:07 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:
> On 16.08.2024 um 10:10 Uhr Winston wrote:
>
>> "badblocks"? 'pkg rquery %n badblocks' finds no such program.
>
> I haven't checked, but here it is listed:
> https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=badblocks&apropos=0&sektion=&manpath=freebsd-ports&format=html#end

pkg which /usr/local/sbin/badblocks
/usr/local/sbin/badblocks was installed by package e2fsprogs-core-1.47.1

Sorry but I assume it's only for Linux-filesystems.

sysutils/smartmontools seem to me the right tool to examine a disk on
hardware issues.

Detlef
--
https://www.12schrittefrei.de/
https://www.noart.de/

On 16.08.2024 um 16:38 Uhr Detlef Sax wrote:

> /usr/local/sbin/badblocks was installed by package
> e2fsprogs-core-1.47.1
>
> Sorry but I assume it's only for Linux-filesystems.

IIRC it simply reads (and optionally) writes to the disk - regardless
of the content.
In the manpage are some options for parsing the read stuff to
filesystem programs, but this seems optional to me.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1723819137muell@cartoonies.org

I originally asked:
>> Is there a good FreeBSD HDD diagnostic program?
>>
>> The SATA III disk drive I'd like to test is either partially failing or
>> has corrupted data.

to which "Steven G. Kargl" <sgk@REMOVEtroutmask.apl.washington.edu>
kindly replied:
> There are several tools such as smartmontools, ...

Wow! I've been interested in finding something that reads and displays
the S.M.A.R.T. disk info for a while, mostly for another disk that died
last year, and I see smartctl does that! Bonus! Thanks,
-WBE

On Fri, 16 Aug 2024 21:26:08 +0200, Marco Moock wrote:
> On 16.08.2024 um 16:38 Uhr Detlef Sax wrote:
>
>> /usr/local/sbin/badblocks was installed by package
>> e2fsprogs-core-1.47.1
>>
>> Sorry but I assume it's only for Linux-filesystems.
>
> IIRC it simply reads (and optionally) writes to the disk - regardless
> of the content.
> In the manpage are some options for parsing the read stuff to
> filesystem programs, but this seems optional to me.

Correcting troubles in ufs filesystems is usually a job for fsck (8).
It's shipped together with FreeBSD and is not a 3rd party tool in the
ports intended for linux filesystems.

Detlef
--
https://www.12schrittefrei.de/
https://www.noart.de/

Getting smartmontools turned out to be even more valuable:

It reports that one of my currently working disk drives expects itself
to die in the next 24 hours!

Thanks again for recommending it!
-WBE