Diagnosis on an external USB drive

gistfile1.sh

# sudo, on all of these, please
# Unmounted drive is assumed

# Show attached drives to make shure we are talking to the right one
fdisk -l

# Try to write and read (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/790647)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb
md5sum /dev/sdb
md5sum /dev/sdb # Twice -> do the results match?

# Show SMART status
# "value" is normalized to 100=good and should not fall below "threshold"
smartctl -a -d sat /dev/sdb
# Run offline self test (takes hours)
smartctl -t offline -d sat /dev/sdb

# Try to prevent unwanted standby
hdparm -S 0 -K /dev/sdb # S=0 is "no standby", K is "keep setting on restart