Joe, I have started to play with weebotech's advice for using badblocks in addition to your preclear.  Is it possible to use them together?

 

>>The last part of the 4 pass write is 0x00 just like Joe's DD and the preclear.

>>This means after a badblocks 4 pass test you can just write the MBR/Partition and preclear signature.

 

With the badblocks 1.42 - 4 pass write test, is it possible to have preclear_disk.sh just write the preclear signature since it has no need to write zeroes to the entire disk as badblocks has already done that?

 

I am testing badblocks 1.42 and want to know best how to integrate it with preclear_disk.sh

 

thanks...

how did you go about running the badblocks utility, i wouldn't mind giving it a try myself

Here is one link to the topic with instructions on how to run it.  I have found it to be a very lengthy run on 3 tb disks.  Plan on 3 days for a 4 pass destructive wipe the disk test.  Then it is ready for a preclear.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22894.msg205886#msg205886

Joe, I have started to play with weebotech's advice for using badblocks in addition to your preclear.  Is it possible to use them together?

 

>>The last part of the 4 pass write is 0x00 just like Joe's DD and the preclear.

>>This means after a badblocks 4 pass test you can just write the MBR/Partition and preclear signature.

 

With the badblocks 1.42 - 4 pass write test, is it possible to have preclear_disk.sh just write the preclear signature since it has no need to write zeroes to the entire disk as badblocks has already done that?

 

I am testing badblocks 1.42 and want to know best how to integrate it with preclear_disk.sh

 

thanks...

 

+1

Anybody else playing with badblocks for preclearing drives???

 

I would like to invite a discussion about the merits of it relative to the excellent preclear we have from Joe.

I've been using it since the first discussion about badblocks. I typically run the 4-pass destructive, then an abbreviated preclear using Joe's script. I can't remember the exact options for preclear as I'm not at the machine to check the manpage, but I believe you can skip the post read.

preclear_disk.sh -n /dev/sd?

 

Skips the pre-read and post-read phases.  What it doesn't skip is the writing of zeroes to the entire disk.  I am currently running a badblocks 4 pass test on a 3tb WD eurs drive.  It looks like it will take 70+ hours to complete.  Then preclear will take another 8 hrs to rewrite the zeroes that badblocks has just done.  I would just like to know how do you skip the writing zeroes part when you run preclear.

 

Then my final question is, once we have simplified this integration of badblocks and preclear, have we found the holy grail to pretesting new drives? 

 

Don't know if this is the same badblocks, but this man page shows -w writes 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, 0x00 but -t lets you specify the bits so maybe you could do -t for 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff but let preclear do the final 0x00 or something like that.

preclear_disk.sh -n /dev/sd?

 

Skips the pre-read and post-read phases.  What it doesn't skip is the writing of zeroes to the entire disk.  I am currently running a badblocks 4 pass test on a 3tb WD eurs drive.  It looks like it will take 70+ hours to complete.  Then preclear will take another 8 hrs to rewrite the zeroes that badblocks has just done.  I would just like to know how do you skip the writing zeroes part when you run preclear.

 

Then my final question is, once we have simplified this integration of badblocks and preclear, have we found the holy grail to pretesting new drives?

 

I am in hour 52 of badblocks on my first 3TB (a Seagate) showing 54% done of pass #4.

 

~Whip

so this may be a stupid question, but do you guys actually get a display of the percentage complete using badblocks. All i get is  block count / total.

 

I invoke it with 'badblocks -svw /dev/sdX' which is supposed to give the percentage of the pass you're on.

 

Also, anyone else have the total blocks of a 3TB drive appear as '-1364700713'. It doesn't seem to affect functionality, it just seems weird.

Get the badblocks 1.42 to get the more detailed reporting.

I believe Joe L is exploring the use of badblocks. See other thread.

If it can be integrated, at least part of the preclear could use badblocks for pattern writing, then the rest of preclear could be used for a final read (or skipped) and writing the preclear signature.

 

 

My recommendation would be to have badblocks do the pattern write/read tests.

simplify preclear to capture smart before,  capture smart after, present the current (diffed) values to the user and write the signatures.

 

 

What I like about the DD is it tells you how fast it is reading/writing to the drive.

I hope to add that to badblocks one day so that you can get an idea of max speed reading or writing.

If it drops to a very low value you know it's stuck in some point and can look at the syslog.

 

 

As much as I would like to do it, it will be a while before I can build another unRAID server since all my stuff was destroyed due to sandy. 

 

Get the badblocks 1.42 to get the more detailed reporting.

 

Thanks, I'll look into it.

As much as I would like to do it, it will be a while before I can build another unRAID server since all my stuff was destroyed due to sandy.

 

Ouch......

Get the badblocks 1.42 to get the more detailed reporting.

 

Complete UNIX noob here. Looked around the my flash drive and don't have a clue how to install the badblocks 1.42 file I DL'd from Weebo's site. A little help would be most appreciated.

I just copied it to my flash drive, then using putty telneted into the server and ran it from there ( /boot which is your flash drive).  It's that simple. 

I just copied it to my flash drive, then using putty telneted into the server and ran it from there ( /boot which is your flash drive).  It's that simple.

 

Thanks. That's what I thought, but it seems too simple. I thought there should be a 'bin' directory, or something.