I'm running badblocks on a 2TB external USB drive (WD Elements) for about 4 days now and it is still running. I initiated the command as follows:/sbin/badblocks -wsv -o badblocks-ext-disk.txt /dev/sdcIt's output untill now has been:Checking for bad blocks in read-write modeFrom block 0 to 1953481728Testing with pattern 0xaa: doneReading and comparing: doneTesting with pattern 0x55: doneReading and comparing: 857148544 / 1953481728I'm not really familiar with badblocks and can't imagine that it should take this long. I would imagine badblocks should already have put some contents in badblocks-ext-disk.txt but it's still 0 bytes. So now I guess that it will write it's output when it finishes the scan. Can I cancel badblocks and still get some useful results? Are there any other tips you can give me on analysing this disk on defects? And what is causing the long scan?
Badblocks on 2TB external USB disk
badblocks