[whitepoplar]

How long does the data refresh take, approx? Let's say I have an external portable SSD that I keep stored data on. Would plugging the drive into my computer and running

  dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/null bs=1M status=progress

work to refresh any bad blocks internally?

[fairfeather]

A full read would do it, but I think the safer recommendation is to just use a small hdd for external storage. Anything else is just dealing with mitigating factors

[whitepoplar]

Thanks! I think you're right about just using an HDD, but for my portable SSD situation, after a full read of all blocks, how long would you leave the drive plugged in for? Does the refresh procedure typically take a while, or would it be completed in roughly the time it would take to read all blocks?