Harddisk measuring

[Jim Higson]

On Saturday 31 July 2004 11:55, Roger Grosswiler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i had to setup my fc2 box because of a hd crashed. after installing my
> new, all went well - except the busy light of the harddisk now burns
> permanently. As response from the supplier i got: this might happen, new
> hd's use 3.3V instead of 5V, so if you motherboard not recognizing it,
> it is no problem - but the new hd is 5V either - they should know, as i
> sent them models, serialnumbers and all of it - another example for a
> helpdesk not really caring about the problems of their customers and
> just replying without a good investigation before.
>
> I know, here i am in good hands.
>
> so, i expect that even if the busy lamp burns permanently, the ide-disk
> doesn't turn fulltime. it's just the lamp. so perhaps some pins at the
> disk are a kind of weird.

The hard drive light being on all the time is usually a sign the drive has not 
been connected properly (or the hdd led was been wired to the power led 
pins... )

Drives needing a 3.3v rail are usually SATA and only work with newer 
equipment, although adaptors etc are avaliable. 

Btw, 'burns' isn't really used like this in english unless we're talking about 
a fire, something being damaged by heat or a CD burner (writer). 'The hard 
drive light is on all the time' would be more usual. Don't take this as 
critisism, just trying to help you.

> i look now for a tool, that measures rpms of the ide-disk, without doing
> benchmarks. so i could see, if no i/o-operation is going on the speed
> should be 0, and if some i/o-operation going on the speed of the disk.

The best way I can think of to see if a disk is spinning is just to touch it 
and feel the vibrations, or put your ear next to it and see if you can hear 
any noise.

> i was searching for days now in internet and found for win many toosl
> using s.m.a.r.t - this tells start/stop  but almost in % and doesnt
> really help me.
>
> why this damn light is disturbing me? i use a laptop - if this hd
> doesn't stop spinning, i don't have so much battery-lifetime, thats all.
>
> so, does somebody know a tool, where i can measure the rpm's? it should
> really be some kind of daemon or whatever, that just measures the actual
> speed of the harddisk.

You can measure data rates (but not rpm) with for example:

$ /sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hda

here you can also set all parameters like how long the computer waits before 
spinning the drive down.