dumping large partition to USB drive fails

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Roland Smith wrote:

>I'll disassemble the malfunctioning drive, put  it in an old PC and run
>smartctl on it. Are there any other tests that might be worthwhile?
>  
>
Manufacturer's diagnostics.  Usually: download from manufacturer site, 
burn onto CD, reboot from CD, voila.

If you are seriously dubious about the disk then run SMART long test.  
The smartctl man page has the details.  But no manufacturer ever wants 
to accept a return unless their own diagnostics fail :-(

--Alex