[K12OSN] RAID Question

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Thu Apr 9 17:22:48 UTC 2009


Joseph Bishay wrote:
>
> I have a follow-up question -- the RAID is made up of 2 refurbished
> drives we were able to obtain (cost issues).  I'd like to find a
> command / program that I can use to test them / stress them while they
> are still in their warranty period (90 days).  I've done some research
> and came across a lot of options: Bonnie++, badblocks, fsck, smartctl
> -t, etc etc.
> 
> I'm not sure what is best to use -- I guess I want something that will
> check to see if there are any existing current issues and something to
> put the drives under some tests to see if any issues arise.
> 
> The other side of that question is: will the drives being in RAID
> affect these tests at all? Should I run the tests on the RAID array or
> should I dismantle the array, run the tests, then re-enable the array?

I consider hard drives to be about as predictable as light bulbs in 
terms of guessing when they are going to die.  That is, they either work 
or they don't - and tomorrow it might be different.  A simple surface 
scan (like 'cat /dev/sd? >/dev/null') will tell you if anything is bad 
today and (after that) 'smartctl -a' will give you the drive's own best 
guess about tomorrow.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com




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