Testing hard drives

[John M. Długosz]

Does FreeNAS include a built-in feature for scanning the entire surface of a HDD?

 

[survive]

Hi John,

You can use SMART to run tests on your drives. There's a specific "conveyance" test that's used on new drives. You can run the SMART tests via the CLI\ssh'ing in or you could just set up the tests via the GUI & have the tests scheduled to kick of soon. It might be worth it to schedule the tests overnight...I would expect them to run at least as long as a "long" SMART test.

While you are there you might as well set up some periodic short & long tests as well. I run a long test on the first & 15th, and short tests on the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 18th, 21st, 24th & 27th.

-Will

 

[John M. Długosz]

Where is that in the manual? I suppose there is a lot of stuff on the FreeNAS image that is not discussed in the wiki-manual I went through.

 

[survive]

Hi John,

You mean this: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Main_Page?

If you have read through that and still have questions we are happy to clarify things for you.

-Will

 

[Z300M]

Hi John,

You mean this: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Main_Page?

If you have read through that and still have questions we are happy to clarify things for you.

If I specify certain days of the month on which a test is to be performed, why does it still insist that I have to specify certain days of the week as well? ("This is a required field") If I've already specified that a test is to run on the 8th of each month, do I have to specify every day of the week so that the test will be run no matter what day of the week the 8th is?

 

[cyberjock]

If I specify certain days of the month on which a test is to be performed, why does it still insist that I have to specify certain days of the week as well? ("This is a required field") If I've already specified that a test is to run on the 8th of each month, do I have to specify every day of the week so that the test will be run no matter what day of the week the 8th is?

Yep. Welcome to cronjob.

It's designed so you have absolute and total control. Otherwise you couldn't chose something like the 8th day only on weekends or the 8th day only if its a Monday. It's for maximum control.

 

[John M. Długosz]

Hi John,

You mean this: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Main_Page?

If you have read through that and still have questions we are happy to clarify things for you.

-Will

The page on the SMART tests, http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T. , doesn't say anything about surface testing or "conveyance". It just reads the SMART registers and emails you if any values are out of spec.

 

[cyberjock]

The page on the SMART tests, http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T. , doesn't say anything about surface testing or "conveyance". It just reads the SMART registers and emails you if any values are out of spec.

Because you are looking at the wrong page. That's for SMART monitoring. Not SMART testing. Two different things.

I'd highly recommend you download the PDF version of the manual. It has a fairly systematic approach to explaining the GUI. But if you aren't motivated to read the manual(section 4.6 by the way), the link to the wiki is here.

And if you are then going to point out that it doesn't mention surface tests, you are 100% correct. The manufacturer determines what tests are performed(and what test can be performed). That is not controlled by smartd or smartctl. It is up to you to research your hard drive and determine what level of testing is acceptable for you.

 

[survive]

Hi John,

The "conveyance" test is one of the options available when you setup a SMART test in the GUI.

I figured you would either take a look at one of the many online guides to SMART that are out there or else you would setup a the tests via the GUI where a conveyance test is one of the choices for the type of test you want to run.

I suppose the most useful question would be if you have things sorted out? Have you been able to test your drives to your satisfaction?

A co-worker told me about this:

http://www.advancedclustering.com/software/breakin.html

Which is a stress-test tool one the vendors we use at work has released. It has a disk drive tester\exerciser that might prove useful if you want to take the drives out for a flogging.

-Will

 

[John M. Długosz]

Thanks for the link to breakin. That sounds like a great all-in-one tool; I tested memory, CPU, and disk with different tools.

I think the PDF file will be better, as I can read through it and not have secret information hiding behind obscure link pathways.

The brief explanation of SMART tests was helpful too, as it turned out.

I ended up finding a SMART Test Runner on the partedmagic boot disc, and ran surface scans on all three drives in parallel. Hardware is all well!

 

[paleoN]

A co-worker told me about this:

http://www.advancedclustering.com/software/breakin.html

Which is a stress-test tool one the vendors we use at work has released. It has a disk drive tester\exerciser that might prove useful if you want to take the drives out for a flogging.

How familiar are you with this? I took a quick look and the disk drive portion simply appeared to run an instance of badblocks over the drive. Which makes a very poor stress test for a disk.