Common disk errors are physical failures, bad sectors or blocks, and inconsistent filesystems. These disk errors can be checked using standard tools in Linux from the command line.
The disk must not be mounted when performing these tests. In the case where it's a root filesystem, and it's not possible to be unmounted when when there are logged-in users, you can use a live Linux system such as by booting into Ubuntu installer disk. It is similar to when recovering a lost partition table.
$ 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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