How to check disk integrity

[Diatone]

I'm getting some weird i/o kernel errors in my syslog, and was wondering the easiest way to check the integrity or filesystem of a mounted drive. - Or how can I unmount the backup drive, the one without the kernel or system on it, check it, then remount it?

Thanks

[chirpy]

Best way is to reboot and perform an FSCK with:

shutdown -Fr now

However, if the disk is seriously damaged, then running FSCK can completely corrupt it. If you're getting I/O errors then the disks is almost certainly on its last legs and you should get it replaced ASAP. The I/O errors indicate that disk corruption is already taking place, so it should be treated with urgency.

[Blue|Fusion]

Besides checking the integrity of a filesystem, you should check the S.M.A.R.T. info from the drives.

Assuming, they're IDE drives, you can use smartctl -a /dev/hda. There's a way to do SATA with libdata, but not sure on that one.