How indispensable is smartctl ?

[WeeboTech]

Just thought I would post how indispensable smartctl is.

I was having issues with a new drive. I think it's newegg's crappy packing. In any case, I ran a smartctl -tlong on it and the following was returned after 255 minutes.

 

Granted I still have to run the WD diagnostic on the drive, but just to be sure in a quick pinch, I did the smartctl test.

Interesting how the short test succeeded but the long test failed.

 

 

root@Atlas:~# smartctl -lselftest /dev/sdf
smartctl version 5.38 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%        45         57979713
# 2  Short offline       Completed without error       00%        44         -

 

 

Smartctl can be your friend, learn it's interface it may save you headaches in the future.

 

Still I think some of these log views, and test submissions should be part of the user interface.

Oh how I wish we had a standard webserver for unRAID.

 

 

[SSD]

It is always better to know these things BEFORE the drive becomes part of your array.  So many people blindly add a drive to the array without running a good burn in test.  Refer to my sig for links to a good burn-in process for two new drives (part of the "Best of the forums" links).  Adding this smartdrv test is likely a good idea also.

[WeeboTech]

I think it advisable to use badblocks as a burn in test.

Perhaps badblocks should be used as the clearing tool.

 

-w     Use write-mode test. With this option, badblocks scans for bad blocks by writing  some  patterns  (0xaa,
              0x55,  0xff,  0x00)  on every block of the device, reading every block and comparing the contents.  This
              option may not be compiled with the -n option, as they are mutually exclusive.