Filesystem check in your USB external hard drives
Table of Contents
Typically, every number of mounts, your partitions are automatically checked (e2fsck
) at boot time. This will check and repair your hard drives.
But, if you have external hard drives connected only when needed, this automatic checks aren’t performed.
I recommend you to check your hard drive after like 30 mounts. See what is the maximum mount count in your internal system hard drive and use that count as reference.
I will list a number of useful commands to gather information about your drives and to check and repair them.
If you have suggestions, please let me know.
Checking your partitions⌗
Use the command tree to list all your partition and find out witch device you want to check.
- Install tree
sudo apt-get install tree
- List all drives
tree /dev/disk
- List drives by label (probably more easy)
sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-label
Maximum mount count⌗
Use the maximum mount count in your internal system hard drive and use that count as reference to regullary check your external hard drives.
sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda5 | grep "Maximum mount count"
Check Filesystem⌗
- Make sure the filesystem is unmounted
sudo umount /dev/sda5
- Check and repair filesystem
sudo e2fsck -C0 -f -p -v /dev/sda5
- Check for bad blocks (this will take a while in big drives)
sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sdb1 >> badblocks.report
- See the report created
cat badblocks.report
smartmontools⌗
Use the command smartmontools
to print all SMART information about the disk (if your disk have smart capabilities).
- Install smartmontools
sudo apt-get install smartmontools
- Print SMART information about the disk
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
Please comment this post with more useful tips or send me an email.