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7

How do I choose the right parameters when using badblocks?

rated 0 times [ 7] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 10107 / 2 Years ago, thu, october 13, 2022, 3:17:51

I'd like to use badblocks to check my new drive for bad blocks, but I'm not sure how to choose the values for block size and number of blocks to test in parallel. The man page just says:

-b block-size
Specify the size of blocks in bytes. The default is 1024.

-c number of blocks is the number of blocks which are tested at a time. The default is 64.

The drive to test is 2TB large, so I'd like to use values that don't make this process take days. :-)

FWIW, smartmoontools reports:

Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical

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answered 2 Years ago rieency · Accepted Answer

Since your drive has a 4096 byte physical sector size, you want to use -b 4096. I don't think the -c argument makes much difference, so just leave it alone.

Also the drive's internal SMART test is better and faster than badblocks, so using smartmontools or the disk utility to run that instead is a better idea.