WHDD — HDD diagnostic and recovery tool for Linux

English | 简体中文

WHDD is an HDD diagnostic and recovery tool for Linux. Its console UI (ncurses/libdialog) follows the classic MHDD workflow: whole-drive read tests with per-block timing visualization, device copying with fault-tolerant read strategies, SMART reporting and more.

• Project website: http://whdd.github.io
• License: GNU GPL v3
• Sources, bugreports: https://github.com/whdd/whdd

This repository is a modified edition of whdd/whdd. All upstream features remain intact; the changes made in this edition are described below.

Changes in this edition

Read test

• Fixed 100x40 console layout, anchored to the top-left corner. Resizing the terminal during a scan can no longer garble the display: drawing simply pauses while the terminal is smaller than the layout and resumes automatically once it is large enough again.
• A terminal smaller than the layout is reported with a clear error dialog at startup instead of failing silently.
• MHDD-style access-time color scale (dark gray / gray / light gray / green / light red / red). The thresholds scale with the read block size, so the colors keep their meaning on any block size.
• Selectable read block size: 256, 1024 or 4096 sectors per block (128 KiB / 512 KiB / 2 MiB).
• Device model and serial number are shown in the scan screen.

Scan reports

After a read test, two files are written automatically:

• WHDD_REPORT_<serial>_<YYMMDD>_<HHMMSS>.report — summary: parameters, speed, access-time histogram, error type counts and the error LBA range.
• WHDD_REPORT_<serial>_<YYMMDD>_<HHMMSS>.dg — DiskGenius-style defect list grouped by severity: damaged (read errors), severe (red,

  = 500 ms) and slow (light red, 150..500 ms), each listed as contiguous LBA intervals. Thresholds scale with the block size.

Experimental

A standalone dd-style tool (whdd-dd) is being developed on the dev branch: single-LBA block reads with status and timing, through POSIX O_DIRECT reads or ATA READ DMA EXT (SAT), and fully logical-sector-size aware (512n / 512e / native 4Kn drives).

Build and install

Debian/Ubuntu dependencies: ./build_depends.sh (make, gcc, pkgconf, dialog, libncurses-dev).

./build.sh && sudo make install

or step by step:

make                # release build
make whdd_g         # debug build
sudo make install   # installs to /usr/local/bin

CMake is also supported: cmake . && make, or cmake -DSTATIC=ON . && make for a static binary (builds ncurses and dialog into external/).

Run as root to access block devices.

License

GNU GPL v3 — see LICENSE. The original WHDD is copyright Andrey Utkin and contributors; the modifications in this repository are distributed under the same license.