Re: Raid5 Construction Question

[Mike Hardy <mhardy@h3c.com>]

Using the SMART protocol to automatically test and monitor them (after a 
full test when I first build the box is how I typically steer clear of 
these things.

I've only done more err...budget setups using IDE but apparently it 
works well on SCSI too:

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/smartmontools_scsi.html

You could very quickly issue a full test command to all the drives then 
come back later and check them to make sure they completed correctly

-Mike

Kourosh wrote:

> I've found that one of the better ways of varifying a disk is to run 
> the disk manufacturers disk utilities on it.  They all provide a 
> bootable disk to run the utilities.  Several times I've had problems 
> similar to this and each time it ended up being a disk that was 
> failing.  Run the utility as all the vendors I've dealt with require 
> the error code from the utility to process an RMA, so might as well do 
> it sooner, rather than later.
> 
> You could also try low-level formating each disk using the SCSI 
> controllers utilities.  IIRC it should remap any bad blocks.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Kourosh