2025-12-13 Bad blocks
Today I ran Bork Backup again and it wouldn't finish:
: read: [Errno 5] Input/output error
I didn't know whether this was the disk in my laptop or the backup disk.
sudo grep -i "I/O error" /var/log/syslog ... 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195642+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416128 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195912+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416129 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195924+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416130 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195935+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416131 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195938+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416132 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195942+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416133 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195946+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416134 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195950+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416135 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195954+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416136 2025-12-13T15:13:51.195958+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 338416137 ... 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667445+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116500 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667446+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116501 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667446+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116502 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667447+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116503 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667448+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116504 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667448+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116505 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667449+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116506 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667449+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116507 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667450+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116508 2025-12-13T15:20:40.667450+01:00 melanobombus kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 340116509
The answer is that it is `/dev/sdb1` and that's the backup disk. Well, that's better than the laptop disk!
The disk is so old it doesn't support `smartmon`, I think.
So, let's unmount and check it:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1 sudo fsck /dev/sdb1
The result of that was a single note:
fsck from util-linux 2.41 e2fsck 1.47.2 (1-Jan-2025) Backup: recovering journal Backup contains a file system with errors, check forced. Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information Free blocks count wrong (45388133, counted=45363123). Fix? yes Backup: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ***** Backup: 2912/91578368 files (0.2% non-contiguous), 320921165/366284288 blocks
Now I'm going to try and find the bad blocks and mark them:
sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sdb
This is going to take a long time.
The last time this happened to me was 20 years ago.
In the mean time, I found that old 1 TB hard disk I still had lying around, formatted it, created an ext4 filesystem on it, went back to my old instructions and added its ID to the backup disks, setup a new Borg repository and started a run.
I think think I need to buy a new backup disk.