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Neyts Zupan
Tech
TechNeyts ZupanFinding bad blocks on USB flash drives
After a recent thorough cleaning of my office desk I found a handful of USB sticks. I knew some of them were more or less broken and some should be OK. But...
Neyts Zupan- Install ext2fsx.
- Insert USB drive.
- Backup data from the USB drive because ‘badblocks’ removes all data from the stick.
- Identify USB drive in console.
$ mount
... snip ...
/dev/disk1 on /Volumes/NO NAME (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)- Unmount USB drive so we can run ‘badblocks’ on it.
$ sudo umount -f /Volumes/NO\ NAME/- Run badblocks to identify and mark bad block
WARNING: badblocks removes all data on drive. Make sure you have a backup and that you don’t mistype the drive’s i
$ badblocks -vw /dev/disk1- Use ‘Disk Utility’ to format the drive so you can actually use it.
Neyts Zupan
Neyts is the Digital Overlord of Niteo, poking his nose into any and all technical things.
