{"id":12695,"date":"2019-03-28T13:42:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T13:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=12695"},"modified":"2019-03-28T13:42:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T13:42:07","slug":"3-useful-gui-and-terminal-based-linux-disk-scanning-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2019\/03\/28\/3-useful-gui-and-terminal-based-linux-disk-scanning-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Useful GUI and Terminal Based Linux Disk Scanning Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

There mainly two reasons for scanning a computer hard disk: one is to examine it for filesystem inconsistencies or errors that can result from persistent system crashes, improper closure of critical system software and more significantly by destructive programs (such as malware, viruses etc).<\/p>\n

And another is to analyze its physical condition, where we can\u00a0check a hard disk for bad sectors<\/a>\u00a0resulting from physical damage on the disk surface or failed memory transistor.<\/p>\n

Suggested Read:<\/b>\u00a0How to Repair and Defragment Linux Partitions<\/a><\/p>\n

In this article, we will review a mix of GUI and terminal based disk scanning utilities for Linux.<\/p>\n

In case you notice any unusual behavior from a computer hard disk or a particular partition, one of the first things you can always investigate is filesystem inconsistency or errors and there is no other better utility for performing this other than\u00a0fsck<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

1. fsck \u2013 Filesystem Consistency Check<\/h3>\n

fsck<\/strong>\u00a0is a system utility used to check and optionally\u00a0repair a Linux filesystem<\/a>. It is a front-end for several filesystem checkers.<\/p>\n

Warning<\/strong>: Try out\u00a0fsck<\/strong>\u00a0commands on test Linux servers only, unless you know what you\u2019re doing..<\/p>\n

Always unmount a partition first before you can run\u00a0fsck<\/strong>\u00a0on it.<\/p>\n

$ sudo unmount \/dev\/sdc1\r\n$ sudo fsck -Vt vfat \/dev\/sdc1\r\n<\/pre>\n
In the command below, the switch:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. -t<\/code>\u00a0\u2013 specifies the filesystem type.<\/li>\n
  2. -V<\/code>\u00a0\u2013 enables verbose mode.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    You can find detailed usage instructions in the\u00a0fsck<\/strong>\u00a0man page:<\/p>\n
    $ man fsck\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Once you have performed filesystem inconsistency tests, you proceed to carry out physical condition assessments.<\/p>\n
    2. badblock<\/h3>\n
    badblocks<\/strong>\u00a0is a utility for\u00a0scanning bad blocks or bad sectors in hard disks<\/a>. Assuming you detect any bad blocks on your hard disk, you can use it together with\u00a0fsck<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0e2fsck<\/strong>\u00a0to instruct the kernel not to use the bad blocks.<\/p>\n
    For more information on how to check bad blocks using badblock utility, read:\u00a0How to Check Bad Sectors or Bad Blocks on Hard Disk in Linux<\/a>.<\/p>\n
    3. S.M.A.R.T System Utilities<\/h3>\n
    S.M.A.R.T<\/strong>\u00a0(Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology<\/strong>) is a system built into nearly all modern ATA\/SATA and SCSI\/SAS hard disks as well as solid-state disks.<\/p>\n
    It collects in-depth information about a supported hard disk and you can get that data using the utilities below.<\/p>\n
    i. Smartctl<\/h4>\n
    smartctl<\/strong>\u00a0is one of the two utilities under the smartmontools package. It is a command line utility which controls and monitors the\u00a0S.M.A.R.T<\/strong>\u00a0system.<\/p>\n
    To install\u00a0smartmontools<\/strong>\u00a0package, run the applicable command below for your distro:<\/p>\n
    $ sudo apt-get install smartmontools   #Debian\/Ubuntu systems \r\n$ sudo yum install smartmontools       #RHEL\/CentOS systems\r\n<\/pre>\n
    The following is an example of a\u00a0smartctl<\/strong>\u00a0command for reporting hard disk partition health where the option\u00a0-H<\/code>helps to show the general partition health condition after a self-test:<\/p>\n
    $ sudo smartctl -H \/dev\/sda6\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Look through the\u00a0smartctl<\/strong>\u00a0man page for more usage guidelines:<\/p>\n
    $ man smartctl \r\n<\/pre>\n
    There is a GUI front-end for\u00a0smartctl<\/strong>\u00a0called\u00a0gsmartcontrol<\/strong>\u00a0which can be installed as follows:<\/p>\n
    $ sudo apt-get install gsmartcontrol  #Debian\/Ubuntu systems \r\n$ sudo yum install gsmartcontrol       #RHEL\/CentOS systems\r\n<\/pre>\n
    \n
    \"GSmart<\/a><\/p>\n
    GSmart Control \u2013 Linux Disk Scanning Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
    ii. Gnome Disk Utility( or Disks)<\/h4>\n
    Gnome disk utility offers a GUI for doing all the partition management related tasks such as creating, deleting, mounting partitions and beyond. It comes pre-installed in majority of mainstream Linux systems such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint and others.<\/p>\n
    To use it on\u00a0Ubuntu<\/strong>, open the\u00a0Dash<\/strong>\u00a0and search for\u00a0Disks<\/strong>, on\u00a0Linux Mint<\/strong>, open\u00a0Menu<\/strong>\u00a0and search for\u00a0Disks<\/strong>\u00a0and on\u00a0Fedora<\/strong>, click on\u00a0Activities<\/strong>\u00a0type\u00a0Disks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
    \n
    \"Gnome<\/a><\/p>\n
    Gnome Disk Utility for Linux Disk Scanning<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
    More importantly, it can as well provide\u00a0S.M.A.R.T<\/strong>\u00a0data and effect self-tests as in the following interface.<\/p>\n
    \n
    \"Gnome<\/a><\/p>\n
    Gnome Disk Utility for Linux Disk Scanning<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
    That\u2019s it! In this article, we reviewed hard disk scanning utilities for Linux operating system. You can share with us any utilities\/tools for the same purpose, that are not mentioned in the list above or ask any related questions all in the comments.<\/p>\n
    Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    There mainly two reasons for scanning a computer hard disk: one is to examine it for filesystem inconsistencies or errors that can result from persistent system crashes, improper closure of critical system software and more significantly by destructive programs (such as malware, viruses etc). And another is to analyze its physical condition, where we can\u00a0check … <\/p>\n
    Continue reading “3 Useful GUI and Terminal Based Linux Disk Scanning Tools”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12696,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12695\/revisions\/12696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}