For better or worse I’ve been needing to check drives for errors quite a bit recently and have been using the badblocks command to do it. It’s definitely a command that people should become familiar with. Where fsck checks the file system for problems, badblocks attempts to ascertain the status of physical media which can include hard disks, usb drives, and other usb devices such as media players. I’ve compiled a detailed list of commands I’ve been using.

Encryption is becoming more common as users realize the dangers posed if someone were to get the data on their computers. The Ubuntu installer even prompts the user to setup an encrypted disk. While encrypting the primary disk of a desktop or laptop is desirable, I tend to use an external encrypted disk to store much of my data. To be more accurate I create a single large partition on the disk and encrypt that partition. I thought it would be useful, especially given the quality of information on the web, to share my process and some information about the options available.