How to check and fix the disk for errors and bad sectors

In Linux Mint after a certain number of mounts hard drives ("restart computer") forced to on fsck to check the hard drive. Many people know that using tune2fs can be controlled intervals fsck checks. But sometimes you need to check the disk "here and now". If you run fsck with an indication of your drive, the more likely they mounted and fsck will warn you that it is fraught for you. How can that be? To unmount to check? But what about the root?

A simple disk check can be enjoyed in the system. On the next boot, the system will automatically check all drives, then safely downloaded to your desktop.

sudo touch /forcefsck

The sudo command (after entering password) will give you the right to create using touch an empty file in the root of the drive /forcefsck, which serves as a signal (flag) for fsck, need to check the disks.
You have to reboot and fsck will start to scan all hard disks listed in /etc/fstab.

Also you can check the system disk in Gparted in LiveCD mode. To do this, unmount the desired partition, right click, Check.

But what do we do if we need to check and block bad sectors on the System partition?

The following steps can be performed either by booting to a LiveCD.

BUT if you will check the external (not the system disk), you can easily to do it from your "home" system, from pre-unmount the scanned section.

I will show an example in LiveCD mode.

1. Boot into LiveCD mode

2. Watch full list of storage volumes:

sudo fdisk -l

In my example this section alone, because I show you an example on a virtual machine. I need to check sda1

How to check and fix the disk for errors and bad sectors in Linux Mint

3. To dispel doubts, whether the selected drive, you can check the model of the hard drive (carefully, instead of sda1 in the command written sda):

sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda | grep Model

4. If the volume is mounted, before checking should be unmounted:

sudo umount /dev/sda1

5. Checking for badblocks. where badblocks.log file that records the number of dead blocks.

sudo badblocks -v -s /dev/sda1 > badblocks.log

How to check and fix the disk for errors and bad sectors in Linux Mint

6. Marking bad blocks (marked blocks will be ignored by the system in future):

sudo e2fsck -l badblocks.log /dev/sda1

How to check and fix the disk for errors and bad sectors in Linux Mint

That's all. The same procedure should be done after formatting the new drives.

Fix your HDD disk:

Before you check the file system must be unmounted, for example:

umount /dev/sda1

This single command can do all the previous steps at one time

sudo fsck -t -y -f -c /dev/sda1

The keys and command options fsck:
y - always answer yes to all questions (there is an alternative: the -p key starts the test in a fully automatic mode);

f - forces a file system check (even if the file system is marked as fully functional)

c - looking for broken blocks (bad blocks), and then marks them accordingly

Good Luck!!!