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How to use fsck to Find and Repair Disk Errors and Bad Sectors
Updated Thursday, September 20, 2018 by Linode Written by Edward Angert
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This guide is part of a series on Linux commands and features. Not all commands may be relevant to Linode-specific hardware, and are included
here to provide an easy to access reference for the Linux community. If you have a command or troubleshooting tip that would help others, please
submit a pull request or comment.
What is fsck?
fsck, short for file system consistency check, is a utility that examines the file system for errors and attempts to repair them if possible. It uses a
combination of built-in tools to check the disk and generates a report of its findings.
On some systems, fsck runs automatically after an unclean shutdown or after a certain number of reboots.
When to Use fsck
Use fsck to check your file system if your system fails to boot, if files on a specific disk become corrupt, or if an attached drive does not act as
expected. Unmount the disks you intend to work on before attempting to check or repair them.
Caution
Unmount the target disk first. You risk corrupting your file system and losing data if you run fsck on an active disk.
-N Test run. Describes what would happen without executing the check itself.
df -h
Copy the location of the target disk to use with the fsck command.
Configuration Profile
If you are working on a Linode but do not wish to use Rescue Mode, shut down the Linode from the Linode Manager. Unmount the disk from the
Configuration Profile (/docs/platform/disk-images/disk-images-and-configuration-profiles/#editing-a-configuration-profile). Apply the changes and
reboot the Linode.
Manual Unmount
If you are working on a local machine, unmount the disk manually.
1. Use umount to unmount the disk location copied in the previous step:
umount /dev/sdb
2. If the disk is declared in /etc/fstab , change the mount point to none there as well.
fsck -A /dev/sdb
0 No errors
8 Operational error
This example uses fsck to check all file systems except the root, and will attempt repair using the interactive feature:
fsck -AR -y
To check and attempt to repair any errors on /dev/sdb , use this format:
fsck -y /dev/sdb
More Information
You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful,
please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.
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