Scan hard drive for errors with badblocks

To scan a suspect hard drive for errors I use the linux badblocks program. Windows often seems to silently try to "fix" problems without telling you what if anything was wrong which does not help if I want to know if a hdd is starting to get bad sectors.  Be careful as this program in destructive mode will overwrite your data (but also give a more thorough test as it will try writing to the disk as well as reading)

#badblocks -nvs /dev/sda

-n = non destructive (read only mode)
-v = verbose
-s = Print out progress