Retrieve the name of the device

To get the name of the device you want to test, you can use the 'fdisk -l' command as root (or sudo 'command') as for all the following commands. Another way is to look in the '/etc/fstab' file. For the rest of this article the disk name will be '/dev/sdX'.

Retrieve bad blocks from a disk: badblocks

This command line utility is used to find sectors of a device that can not be used due to permanent damage, like physical damage. You can run it in read only mode (default), or in read/write non destructive (preserve data) mode.

Check and repair a Linux file system: fsck

fsck must be run on an unmounted device (umount /dev/sdX) if it is not needed by your system. You can also run it on the system device.
To check all the partitions now: To check a partition we just create an empty file named 'forcefsck' on the root of the partition: To check an unmounted ext3 partition n and interactively fix it: To check an unmounted ext3 partition n and fix it automatically (can be dangerous): To check your partition n every 10 boots:

Mark bad sectors as 'unusable' sectors: fsck and badblocks

Fsck can use badblocks to find the bad blocks and add it to the bad block inode to mark it as unusable. We can ask for a simple read only test '-c', or a non destructive read/write test '-cc'. I hope this article helped you to fix your computer. :)