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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Repairing bad sectors in an external drive (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Sentau@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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So I have this external 2.5" drive salvaged from an old laptop of mine. I was trying to use it to backup/store data but the transfer to the drive fails repeatedly at the ~290GB mark leading me to believe that maybe there is a bad sector on the drive. I tried to inspect the drive using smartmontools and smartctl but since it is an external drive, i was not allowed to do so. Is there anyway for me to inspect and fix this drive? I am on fedora ublue-main. The HDD is a 1TB seagate drive.

Edit : I am a linux noob so some hand holding will be appreciated. Also i am looking to use this drive only for low priority media files which i dont mind losing so please help even though it is not the greatest idea to use a failing drive

Edit 2 : It seems my post is not clear of what i am doing. I dont want to recover data from the drive. I want to try to use more of the drive for storing data

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[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 16 points 6 months ago

That's not looking good, usually on a bad sector the drive will write it to a spare sector transparently and mark it as bad internally. That means they've probably all already been used up.

smartctl should work just fine over USB, unless your USB adapter for the drive is really bad. Make sure you're using sudo as well. Worst comes to worst, try using it in a different computer.

Your next goal would be to get it to do a full self test with smartctl. A low level format might help clear some bad state and it might be okay afterwards with a fresh format accounting for whatever defect it built up over time.

I wouldn't recommend it. It might work for a bit and then just die completely.