# Hardware: Surface test disk?



## Maelstorm (Sep 12, 2012)

What's the best way to run a surface test of the harddisk in single user mode?  I thought there was an option in fsck to do it, but I can't seem to find it.  I might be confusing it with chkdsk in Windows.

The problem that I'm having is that the HDD light is half way lit continuously.  It goes to full brightness when the harddisk is actually accessed.  I'm not sure if it's a harddisk problem or if the electronics on the mainboard are failing.  The system is using a mainboard is 11 years old.  It's a DFI AK76-SN board sporting a AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 GHz with 2GB RAM.  It's been a pretty good machine.  I would like to keep it running until it fails completely then I'll upgrade it.


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## wblock@ (Sep 12, 2012)

sysutils/smartmontools can do long tests on disks that support SMART.


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