From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1Hh37l-0002b8-Bp for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:31:02 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with SMTP id l3QCTMbc006961; Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:29:22 GMT Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id l3QCTKgY006956 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:29:21 GMT Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1Hh35w-0006Po-5F for gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:29:08 +0200 Received: from ip68-231-14-69.ph.ph.cox.net ([68.231.14.69]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:29:08 +0200 Received: from 1i5t5.duncan by ip68-231-14-69.ph.ph.cox.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:29:08 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> Subject: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Hard Drive Stress Test Application Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:28:41 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <463017AD.7050401@singnet.com.sg> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: ip68-231-14-69.ph.ph.cox.net User-Agent: Pan/0.128 (SR/CL: Leitmotiv: Toynbee Idea) Sender: news X-Archives-Salt: eb14c5f5-5330-4b0f-a573-4dd71f480f12 X-Archives-Hash: 13f8fb75a669d2c4fcc4baaf92e3dfa0 "P.V.Anthony" posted 463017AD.7050401@singnet.com.sg, excerpted below, on Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:08:29 +0800: > Hi, > > Just got the Marvell 6145 chip to work using the patch from, > http://marc.info/?l=linux-ide&m=116986924301674&w=2 > > Now I need to test to see if it works under stress conditions for my > hard disks. > > Please share some links to applications that can do some stress test for > hard disk. Please note that the application should be command line as > there is no GUI like KDE or Gnome. After having a hard drive go out on me a couple years ago, the second one in two years (that one overheated, after the AC went out here in Phoenix, so the room temp could well have been 60 C or higher, and no telling what the drive was), I decided to buy four SATA drives and RAID them together using the kernel RAID (md/mdp). However, before I actually started installing anything on them, I ran badblocks on them, beginning to end, data destructive test (thus the before anything critical is on them is vitally important, tho badblocks does have a couple less intensive modes that aren't data destructive), multiple patterns, repeat-write one pattern one end of the disk to the other, read it back and verify, repeat- write a second pattern, read and verify... IIRC there were four patterns in all, so eight times over the entire 300 gig, four writes, four reads, 1.2 TB per drive, four drives, so 4.8 TB written and read. Talking that sort of data transfer volume, it obviously took /days/, tho luckily I was able to test the four of them in parallel without adding to the time much, since the bottleneck was the disk read/write speed, not the bus or CPU speed. Of course, that's 100% sequential access, so it didn't stress the seek mechanisms much, but it's also 100% duty cycle, / days/ at a time (two and a half days, IIRC), so it certainly well tested the data path, that is, the chipset, the low level drivers, the i/o path electronics on the drive itself, the read/write heads and disk platters. All four disks passed without incident, so I felt reasonably secure in using them for mixed RAID. FWIW, RAID-6 for the main system, so I can lose two drives without losing data. badblocks is part of e2fsprogs, so there's a good chance you have it already merged. =8^) The badblocks manpage tells you what you need to know to run the tests, both destructive and not. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman -- gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list