Re: [gentoo-user] Thrashing a drive to flush out problems..

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 06:27:57AM -0800, Jon Hardcastle wrote:
> There must be some bonnie esk tool that will read/write
> every combination to every block but keep the data safe
> after to flush out any sector issues etc.

If you want to write without destroying data, just use dd to create a
file as big as the empty space, delete, repeat.  If you want to make
sure it thrashes with lots of seeks, create lots of small files, then
delete them randomly, copy them randomly, rewrite in place randomly,
and have many different tasks doing the same thing.

But it all seems rather pointless to me, especially if it's a live
system; if you don't trust the drive, get your data off there and test
it properly.

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