E2fsprogs/badblocks

is block devices.]] Similar to, badblocks reads and writes small patterns of bytes to block devices.

Emerge
badblocks comes as part of the package and should be available as part of the default system profile.

Test a drive
To test a drive with visual progress use the  and   options followed by the path to the block device.

Replace  in the command above with the block device that is to be tested. badblocks should run through a series of four tests and return output similar to the following:

badblocks also supports a non-destructive read-write mode when using the  option instead of. Users are advised to create backups nonetheless.

External resources

 * badblocks on Arch wiki