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 intended to salvage data from bad
       disks.

Command line options

       c file
              Use a list of bad clusters, rather than scanning for bad clusters itself.

       s file
              Use a list of bad sectors (counted from beginning of  filesystem),  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 representation 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 following 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/manual/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.