Re: How to test HDD thoroughly? (Debian Linux "unstable" 2.2.16 k ernel)
On Thu, 26 Oct 2000 kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> on Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 11:13:44PM +0200, Shaul Karl (shaulka@bezeqint.net) wrote:
>>> A week or two back it started misbehaving and I asked a few of you guys about
>>> the place about what "Unknown vector XXX in CPU#0" and "hda interrupt lost"
>>> meant..
>>>
>>> Some people said that it sounds like the hard disk is on the way out. What I
>>> want to know is, how do I test an ext2fs formatted hard disk more intensively
>>> than at just a filesystem level?
>>> If it is indeed the harddisk that has died, does anyone have any
>>> good-condition 1GB-8GB IDE drives? I don't think this old 486'll handle over
>>> 8GB, that and I'm not too crash hot on using some of that 'patch my bios on
>>> boot' master boot sector voodoo evil :)
IIRC, you are located in Australia. Not sure you'd want to pay shipping
for my old drive. ;)
>> e2fsck
>
> I'll have to disagree.
Agreed.
[Side note: one of my pet peeves is people posting incorrect information
to the list. Of course, more annoying is when they post a correct
response but to the wrong question. Not sure which this one was,
but....]
> Many professional system administrators strongly recommend replacing
> hard drives at the first sign of failure. This may be overkill, but
> given the relative values of hardware to data contained, it probably
> makes a lot of sense.
Think of it this way: you value your time at $100/hour, and a user's
time at $1/hour. Say you have 100 users, and there's a hard drive
failure on the partition with their home directories. You now face
minimum 1 day downtime while you replace the drive and restore from
backups. Your users lose 1 day's previous work, plus can't be
productive for another day. Assuming they actually work 6 hours/day,
that's $1200 right there. Factor in your time of 12 hours to get it
back online, and it's another $1200. Would have been simpler to replace
it earlier, costing your time only (and less of it).
Of course, if it's a home system and you're the only user, most of this
doesn't apply. Just keep regular backups and watch your system
carefully.
> Other recommendations on hardware testing appreciated.
I agree badblocks is probably the best, but you could also try bonnie
and bonnie++. If you want to check the health of sectors already
occupied by files, I suppose a
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null
wouldn't hurt.
Damian Menscher
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