Common disk errors include physical failures, bad sectors or blocks, and inconsistent filesystems, which can lead to various problems. Diagnosing these issues in Linux can be done using built-in command line tools.
The disk must not be mounted when performing these tests. If it's necessary to check the root filesystem and it cannot be unmounted due to logged-in users, you can boot into a live Linux system, such as the Ubuntu installer disk. This method is also helpful for recovering partition tables.
$ lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT loop0 7:0 0 55.4M 1 loop /snap/core18/1997 loop1 7:1 0 219M 1 loop /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/66 loop2 7:2 0 64.8M 1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1514 loop3 7:3 0 32.3M 1 loop /snap/snapd/11588 loop4 7:4 0 51M 1 loop /snap/snap-store/518 loop5 7:5 0 65.1M 1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1515 sda 8:0 0 20G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 1M 0 part ├─sda2 8:2 0 513M 0 part /boot/efi └─sda3 8:3 0 19.5G 0 part / sdb 8:16 0 20G 0 disk /mnt/data sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
$ sudo umount /dev/sdb [sudo] password for user:
$ sudo smartctl -H /dev/sdb smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.11.0-16-generic] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Health Status: OK
$ sudo fsck /dev/sdb fsck from util-linux 2.36.1 e2fsck 1.45.7 (28-Jan-2021) /dev/sdb: clean, 11/1310720 files, 126322/5242880 block
$ sudo badblocks -v /dev/sdb Checking blocks 0 to 20971519 Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): done Pass completed, 0 bad blocks found. (0/0/0 errors)
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