From: TJ@noneofyour.business   
      
   On 11/13/2012 04:09 PM, Adam wrote:   
   > TJ wrote:   
   >> Just bought a 1TB external portable drive.   
   > [...]   
   >   
   > In short, I'd suggest making it into several partitions based on your   
   > particular needs, and there's nothing wrong with leaving some of it   
   > unpartitioned for now.  Allow a day or more for full r/w testing of all   
   > the partitions, although of course you can use your computer for   
   > anything else during that.  I'd recommend a thorough r/w test at the   
   > start, before you have any important data on it and while it's still   
   > easy to return or exchange should there be any problems.   
   >   
   >   
   Naturally, being the kind of person I am, I'm ignoring part of your   
   advice for the moment, and using another part.   
      
   For the moment, I believe I'm going to leave it as one big partition, in   
   ext4 format. But, I'm checking for bad blocks as we type. Actually, this   
   is the second test. On the first one, I used Mageia's MCC and simply   
   changed the file system from NTFS to ext4. That happened surprisingly   
   quickly - almost instantly. Made me suspicious, so I did a format,   
   telling MCC yes, I wanted to check for bad blocks. I used my main   
   computer, started it about 8PM, and it was done the next morning. Also a   
   bit surprising. When I checked with a df, I saw that it had the same   
   931GB of the NTFS system, but only 870-odd were available, and if I add   
   the amount used to the amount available I came up with a very large   
   amount unaccounted for. Most disturbing.   
      
   So now I'm doing it again, only I'm using my secondary computer. (Nice   
   thing about having a secondary computer - it's perfect for tasks like   
   this.) This time, I emptied the original partition, and am creating a   
   new ext4 partition in its place, again telling MCC to check for bad   
   blocks. I started it around noon yesterday, and it's still at it, 19   
   hours later. (Not sure why the difference, as both computers run at   
   about the same speed and both use USB 2.0, as does the drive, but I   
   suspect it's because the block size is smaller. Smaller blocks = more   
   blocks to check = more time to check them.)   
      
   I'll give it a few more hours, probably until late tonight, and see what   
   happens. If I get results that make more sense, I'll reconsider having   
   multiple partitions.   
      
   TJ   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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