Re: [gentoo-user] Want to seriously test a NEW hard drive

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I finally got me a 3Tb drive on the way.  Should be here Wednesday.  I
>> have seen some reviews where it would not work right.  I think some of
>> it may be BIOS related since some BIOS's don't like drives that large.
>> Anyway, I want to test this thing real good to really make sure it is up
>> to the task before putting my data on it.  It's going to be so much
>> data, there is really no way to do back-ups at this point.  Come on, 2
>> to 3Tbs on 4Gb DVDs.  Really?  lol  Maybe a external drive later on but
>> for now, well.
>>
>> I have heard of bonnie and friends.  I also think dd could do some
>> testing too.  Is there any other way to give this a good work and see if
>> it holds up?  Oh, helpful hints with Bonnie would be great too.  I have
>> never used it before.  Maybe someone has some test that is really brutal.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
>>
>
>
> Update.  I went to the mailbox and there was a nice pretty brown box.
> Bad thing is, drive is OEM with just a blister pack around it.  The box
> had almost no packing, just a small amount of brown paper.  Ewwwwww!  It
> was just flopping around in the box.
>
> Anyway, I stole a SATA cable from another rig and got this:
>
> root@fireball / # smartctl -t long /dev/sdd
> smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-3.5.0-gentoo] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
>
> === START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
> Sending command: "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately
> in off-line mode".
> Drive command "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in
> off-line mode" successful.
> Testing has begun.
> Please wait 255 minutes for test to complete.
> Test will complete after Wed Aug  8 17:10:46 2012
>
> Use smartctl -X to abort test.
> root@fireball / #
>
> 255 minutes.  Wow.  My plan, let this test finish, do a little bit of
> copy and rm, then test again.  I figure copying 800Gbs to it should give
> it a little bit of a work out since I will be doing it twice.
>
> Yeppie.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
> --
> I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
>
>

Now, don't you wear it out, you hear?!?!? ;-)

If your machine runs all the time you can add smartctl runs as chron
jobs that run at midnight and have the results emailed to you. Look at
them once a week and other than an unpredictable catastrophic failure
you'll likely know a long time before it fails.

Cheers,
Mark