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I have a 1 TB HDD so I want to test for bad sectors or bad blocks but badblocks takes a LOT of time in Linux (barely 4.66% done in 6 hours 3 minutes). In Windows however chkdsk scans in a few seconds and it couldn't find any errors.

What is the difference between bad sectors and bad blocks? Also, what is the difference between chkdsk in Windows and badblocks in Linux when it comes to testing bad sectors?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The short answer is NO, there is no free candy.

Obviously the reason why chkdsk runs so fast is because it doesn't check for bad sectors by default. You have to run it with /r switch to scan for bad sectors, at which point it will get slow as well.

As for the difference between badblocks and chkdsk, the first one is a dedicated tool which discovers bad sectors, while the latter is a general-purpose disk check utility shipped with Windows which happens to have the bad sector recovery feature.

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  • Ok one thing more I wanna ask to you that creating partition on hdd will change the sector number ? So badblocks corrupted 2 days ago because of usb cable at 70% so I dont wanna wait until 70% so I started corrupted sector number which logged by badblocks. It will gives me fully reliable test?
    – makgun
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:23
  • Hmm, nothing is free but 20*6 hours sounds wrong for a consumer drive, barring dumbness like usb2. I think it took Windows less than 12 hours on a similar (but internal) drive. badblocks might not be optimized for modern drives.
    – sourcejedi
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:23
  • sourcejedi my hdd is not modern I think. it is WD element se portable.
    – makgun
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:29
  • @makgun The sector count of the HDD won't change if you create partitions. However, CHKDSK will only test sectors allocated to windows partitions.
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:31
  • @dmitry-grigoryev Ok thanks your very quickly answer.! You saved me alot of time !
    – makgun
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:37
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Is not a fast task, it takes time according your volume size, on linux you can use badblocks command to scan for bad sectors:

Open a Terminal:

badblocks -nsv /dev/[volume]

On windows you can use CHKDSK Start>run>cmd

CHKDSK [volume] /r

badblocks Man Page

CHKDSK deep information

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  • -w option means that DESTRUCTIVE mode? Because o my hdd 45 gb data used and All of them is neccessarry for me. But Now I learned chkdsk. Thanks
    – makgun
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:18
  • @makgun you can play with the options :) thats why i append the man page on foot.
    – Francisco Tapia
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:19
  • I confused that will it destructive or non-destructive? Sorry my english is not so good.
    – makgun
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:35
  • destructive one will destroy data coz it makes the test writting patterns in hard disk, the other method is with -n it will preserve your data corrupted or not.
    – Francisco Tapia
    Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:40

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