[lug] best way to check a new hd that might be going bad

[David L. Willson]

Many times for me, repeatedly dd'ing zeroes and pseudo-random bits onto a drive has cured or killed a questionable drive.

David L. Willson
Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast
RHCE MCT MCSE Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 NovellCLA UbuntuCP
tel://720.333.LANS
Freedom is better when you earn it. Learn Linux.

----- Original Message -----
> 
> 
> On 1/6/12 11:53 AM, karl horlen wrote:
> > per my other recent post.
> >
> >
> > i just bought two 1T drives and installed them in a software raid 1
> > mirror in my server.  i'm already noticing a very high pitched
> > whine that wasn't there with the older smaller drives.  it's
> > doesn't sound super serious right now and appears to come and go
> > but my guess is it's a harbinger of things to come.
> >
> >
> > i imagine i can remove one of the drives at a time from the array,
> > pull the drive from the bay (supermicro type .. not sure if hot
> > plug or not) and reboot to determine which drive is producing the
> > noise.
> >
> > outside of that, are there any cmds / procedures the audience might
> > recommend for determining the physical health of my drives?  like
> > i said they're brand new and newly formatted.
> 
> You can use the SMART management tools to monitor the physical health
> of
> the drives. smartd and smartctl are the tools to use. They also
> support
> some testing capabilities while online.
> 
> >
> > i would prefer to replace the drive if necessary before i restore
> > my old server from backups.  or at a minimum, at least know what
> > to expect going forward so i can prepare for it.
> >
> > if one drive goes down, since the entire system is living on a sw
> > raid (two raid devices md0 and md1), i guess it's really a
> > no-brainer to just slap a new drive in, partition correctly and
> > let the array recover.  so perhaps, i just have to let the disk do
> > it's thing and proceed through warranty if real errors start
> > showing up.  it would save me from having to dban the drive though
> > once it's configured.
> >
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> 
> --
> George Sexton
> MH Software, Inc.
> 303 438-9585
> http://www.mhsoftware.com/
> 
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