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.