How long will badblocks -vws run?

I'm running badblocks -vws /dev/sda on a new 80GB laptop drive to make sure the disk is good. So far it's completed 2 passes and is working on it's third.

How many passes does it normally make?

Robert S. Barnes

Posted 2010-06-16T20:04:41.460

Reputation: 609

Answers

If the only flags you ran the command with were -v, -w and -s, then it should have exited after the first pass. Seeing as you're performing a with-write test, it should be safe to ^C out of anytime.

squircle

Posted 2010-06-16T20:04:41.460

Reputation: 6 365

2@gbroiles That isn't four passes, it's a single pass with four patterns. That might seem pedantic, but the difference is relevant when considering the -t and -p options. See my answer. – Jon Bentley – 2015-05-05T07:40:10.863

4badblocks -swv, at least the version I've got (from e2fsprogs 1.41.11) will run four passes with four different patterns before exiting. – gbroiles – 2010-08-08T19:36:20.043

What you're seeing is not multiple passes, it's multiple test patterns within a single pass. The -w option runs a single pass by default, and you can specify additional passes with the -p option.

However, a single pass with the -w option tests four different patterns: 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, 0x00.

You can override this with the -t option, to specifiy your own test pattern(s). E.g. to test only a single pattern you could do something like this:

badblocks -vwst 0x00 /dev/sda

Jon Bentley

Posted 2010-06-16T20:04:41.460

Reputation: 242