Check disk

See what you have. Use gparted, or these...

# basics
df
# NICE, this shows ALL DRIVES and where they are mounted!
sudo lsblk
# This is nice too, shows "data" for a raw drive, or type for a formatted one.  Nice to know!
sudo file -s /dev/xvdf

Most drive health maintenance is done internally by S.M.A.R.T.

# install smartctl tools
smartctl -c /dev/sdf # to peek at available tests and how long they typically take to run
smartctl -t short /dev/sdf
watch -n 3 smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdf # until success, takes about 1 minute
# if you're feeling ambitious, rerun with [-t long]

You can do more. Boot to a live mode to test root partitions.

This is a tested way to check a PARTITION for bad blocks, and repair:

su -
e2fsck -c /dev/sda5

To scan an entire drive for badblocks (which MAY cause firmware to improve things...?):

badblocks -svv /dev/sda

To repair a drive, you MAY try this, but not tested. e2fsck should be preferred according to [man badblocks]

badblocks -svvn -c 262144 /dev/sda