Can I run badblocks on an IDE (old) HDD linked through USB2?

[pedrolo]

Hello,

I have a 13 years old IDE/ATA HDD that I'm trying to get some use of (150GB). I bought an external case and suddenly, I thought I should test it.

Can I run badblocks on it while it's linked through USB2.0 ???


Also, when i let it connected for a while and finally browse its files, it kind of "wake up", so I hope it wont go to "sleep" while running badblocks

Ty!

[pedrolo]

I'm asking cause a "pro" told me "don't do this through USB, buy an adapter blabla" and I smelt unnecessary b̶u̶l̶l̶s̶h̶i̶t̶ money waste.

[pedrolo]

nobody uses badblocks here? xD

[sourcerer]

Regarding USB: There are 2 USB protocols, the old Mass-Storage, which is simple and limited, and the newer UASP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI ) which gives you full SATA/SCSI functionality, including SMART and any vendor specific commands with full diagnostic access. If you have a USB adapter that supports the UASP protocol, it overcomes the limitations of the old Mass-Storage protocol. The price for such USB adapters is similar to the price of the Mass-Storage ones, so if you have not bought one yet, I would recommend to buy a UASP capable adapter for your disk.

[sourcerer]

Usually you can configure how many seconds the disk needs to be idle to go to sleep. When you run badblocks it will not go to sleep. And even if it were at sleep, badblocks would wake it up and work properly. So I think you dont have to worry there.

[pedrolo]

Regarding USB: There are 2 USB protocols, the old Mass-Storage, which is simple and limited, and the newer UASP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI ) which gives you full SATA/SCSI functionality, including SMART and any vendor specific commands with full diagnostic access. If you have a USB adapter that supports the UASP protocol, it overcomes the limitations of the old Mass-Storage protocol. The price for such USB adapters is similar to the price of the Mass-Storage ones, so if you have not bought one yet, I would recommend to buy a UASP capable adapter for your disk.

Ok ty, i have old USB 2.0 stuff
But badblocks simply reads and writes, so I suppose it should be enough, right? no need for SMART and other stuff.
Also that old HDD probably doesn't have SMART features at all

Ty for the sleep info too.

I think I'm gonna try it soon

[Samir]

The bigger problem you might run into with that drive is that if the ide-usb adapter is old, it might be limited to 120GB as this was a limit back in that era.

Personally, I would just use this hardware bidirectional sata to ide adapter by startech PATA2SATA3--I have 2x of these and they work great. Then you can just use anything you normally would on a sata drive.

[pedrolo]

i ran badblocks on these old small disks, but decided to rely on smarttools for newer and bigger hdds cause it's too long