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tony5429

Member

Registered: 2006-03-28

Posts: 1,017

[SOLVED] How to Scan Flash Drive

So, I just discovered that I accidentally ran my flash drive through the washing machine. It seems to be working just fine, but I'm going ahead and letting it sit in rice for at least a few hours. Then I'm wondering... is there a Linux command to check the flash drive to make sure it is still fully readable/writable? I'd still like to retain the data on it, so I'm thinking some test that would, for each bit, swap the value, make sure the write worked, and then swap the value back to the original... Any ideas?

Last edited by tony5429 (2020-01-12 21:16:26)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,772

Re: [SOLVED] How to Scan Flash Drive

My guess would be that if it works at all, you are probably okay.  Moisture can get into the ICs themselves, but not enough to cause many issues during operation (moisture when soldering the parts is a whole other issue).  Most issues have to do with moisture saturating printed wire boards, the deposition of salts between traces, and the generation of dendritic growth between the copper traces.

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seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,013

Re: [SOLVED] How to Scan Flash Drive

https://shop.westerndigital.com/solutio … resiliency

The tool you're looking for is "badblocks", since most SDHC cards are "dumb" NAND w/o any wear leveling the test should be meaningful.

However: I'd first backup the data and then run a destructive test. Not only will it run faster, but ifff something bad happens, the "non-destrucutve" test is still prone to destroy formerly readable data (because of the way NAND works)

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tony5429

Member

Registered: 2006-03-28

Posts: 1,017

Re: [SOLVED] How to Scan Flash Drive

Thank you ewaller and seth. After sitting overnight, I pulled it out of the rice, confirmed that it seemed to work just fine (reading and writing), and then went ahead and ran badblocks anyway just to be sure (badblocks -nsv /dev/sdb). Zero errors; I'm going to go ahead and conclude that there are no issues with the drive.