[Nottingham] Best way to do a HDD surface scan?

[Alan Pope]

On 23/03/06, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> What's currently the best way to do a non-destructive surface scan of a
> USB HDD from a Linux system?
>

smartctl is the badger you need..

alan at hactar:~$ apt-cache show smartmontools
Package: smartmontools
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 608
Maintainer: Guido Guenther <agx at debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 5.33+5.34cvs20050802-3ubuntu1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.4-1)
Recommends: mailx | mailutils
Conflicts: smartsuite, ucsc-smartsuite
Filename: pool/main/s/smartmontools/smartmontools_5.33+5.34cvs20050802-3ubuntu1_i386.deb
Size: 247824
MD5sum: e63eb43a78abedecdc0ede12a6fead04
Description: control and monitor storage systems using S.M.A.R.T.
 The smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd)
 to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and
 Reporting Technology System (S.M.A.R.T.) built into most modern ATA and SCSI
 hard disks. It is derived from the smartsuite package, and includes support
 for ATA/ATAPI-5 disks. It should run on any modern Linux system.
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu

Check for smart capability (note last lines)

alan at hactar:~$ sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda -d ata
smartctl version 5.34 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-5 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     Hitachi HTS541060G9AT00
Firmware Version: MB3OA61A
User Capacity:    60,011,642,880 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   6
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a
Local Time is:    Thu Mar 23 22:38:05 2006 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Cheers,
Al.