Formatting a new drive

[sean536]

When I buy a new external drive in windows i format it in full format, which formats and identifies bad sectors. In linux when I use gparted or fdisk command it formats in quick way. When i launch badblocks check it takes too much time to complete. What are ways to check for bad sectors and should it be done before or after the formatting?

 

[ryanvade]

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/37659/the-beginners-guide-to-linux-disk-utilities/

 

[sean536]

The problem is badsector scan takes more than 10 hours to complete. Is there a way to do it by parts? If i write information about bad sectors, will it remain there after reformatting and repartitioning of a drive?

 

[Yesyesloud]

If there's nothing important in it, wiping the disk would probably help.

E.g.:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1M

Replace sdx with your actual device and research how to fine tune dd options according to your needs.

Also, on the very general Disks tool that comes with several distributions, you can actually perform a "full format" (zeroing the whole drive). Just pick this erase method on format options.

 

[pane-free]

One could, perhaps, create an ext2 file system on the partition (/dev/sdaX, for example) using gparted, and then run "fsck -c -f /dev/sdaX" -- which is, more or less, what the ryanvade-provided link suggests

 

[Matesax]

man parted
man fsck
gparted (menu - try recover data)

Information about disk - "fdisk -l"