mbadblocks

mbadblocks(1)               General Commands Manual              mbadblocks(1)

Name
       mbadblocks - tests a floppy disk, and marks the bad blocks in the FAT

Note of warning
       This  manpage  has  been  automatically generated from mtools's texinfo
       documentation, and may not be entirely accurate or complete.   See  the
       end of this man page for details.

Description
       The  mbadblocks  command  is  used  to  mark some clusters on an MS-DOS
       filesystem bad. It has the following syntax:

       mbadblocks [-s sectorlist|-c clusterlist|-w] drive:

       If no command line flags  are  supplied,  Mbadblocks  scans  an  MS-DOS
       filesystem  for  bad blocks by simply trying to read them and flag them
       if read fails. All blocks that are unused are scanned, and if  detected
       bad are marked as such in the FAT.

       This command is intended to be used right after mformat.  It is not in-
       tended to salvage data from bad disks.

Command line options
       c file
              Use a list of bad clusters, rather than scanning for  bad  clus-
              ters itself.

       s file
              Use  a  list  of bad sectors (counted from beginning of filesys-
              tem), rather than trying for bad clusters itself.

       w      Write a random pattern to each cluster, then read  it  back  and
              flag  cluster  as bad if mismatch. Only free clusters are tested
              in such a way, so any file data is preserved.

Bugs
       Mbadblocks should (but doesn't yet :-( ) also try to salvage bad blocks
       which are in use by reading them repeatedly, and then mark them bad.

See Also
       Mtools' texinfo doc

Viewing the texi doc
       This  manpage  has  been  automatically generated from mtools's texinfo
       documentation. However, this process is only  approximative,  and  some
       items,  such as crossreferences, footnotes and indices are lost in this
       translation process.  Indeed, these items have no appropriate represen-
       tation  in  the manpage format.  Moreover, not all information has been
       translated into the manpage version.  Thus I strongly advise you to use
       the original texinfo doc.  See the end of this manpage for instructions
       how to view the texinfo doc.

       *      To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the  fol-
              lowing commands:

                     ./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi

       *      To generate a html copy,  run:

                     ./configure; make html

       A premade html can be found at `http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/man-
       ual/mtools.html'

       *      To generate an info copy (browsable  using  emacs'  info  mode),
              run:

                     ./configure; make info

       The  texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html.  Indeed, in
       the info version certain examples are difficult  to  read  due  to  the
       quoting conventions used in info.

mtools-4.0.24                       22Mar20                      mbadblocks(1)