From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Justin Piszcz Subject: Re: detecting/correcting _slightly_ flaky disks Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 10:09:54 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: References: <17898.45673.573800.56474@notabene.brown> <45EB3867.8050907@eyal.emu.id.au> <17899.18568.523543.478792@notabene.brown> <45EBCA83.40106@eyal.emu.id.au> <45EC2F89.2070703@pobox.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Return-path: In-Reply-To: <45EC2F89.2070703@pobox.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Michael Stumpf Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Michael Stumpf wrote: > I'm trying to assemble an array (raid 5) of 8 older, but not yet old age ATA > 120 gig disks, but there is intermittent flakiness in one or more of the > drives. Symptoms: > > * Won't boot sometimes. Even after moving to 2 power supplies and monitoring > the amp spikes, sometimes I get "clicking" from 1-2 of the drives after the > startup. > > * When initiating a SMART long test, so far two of them have: > + passed 50-75% of the time > + when "failed", didn't actually fail, just perpetually were stuck at > an arbitrary % of test remain. > + If I cancel and restart the test, often they pass. > > I've heard clicking from some drives when executing SMART long tests. Doing > 4 drives at a time, but still can't > isolate and don't want to use laborious "sit and listen by computer" method > to determine which are dying--would prefer a tool to detect the issue. > > I know there's a problem with one or more because my issues with my primary > array disappeared the minute I used LVM to remove these devices (and upgrade > to some larger/newer ones). > > Two questions: > > 1) Is it smartest to isolate which drives are clicking and chuck them into > the wood chipper, given the circumstances? > > 2) Are there tools that are designed to determine if a drive is fit for > duty? dd_rescue et all seem focused on saving a dying drive; spinrite seems > to be controversial black magic marketing, etc. I could try the manufacturer > shipped tools but given their black box nature I have no idea how much (or > little) is being done by their tests. What do you folks recommend? > > Thanks in advance. > --Michael Stumpf > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > This is what I use: 799] What is the best way to verify a hard drive has no bad blocks? /usr/bin/time badblocks -b 512 -s -v -w /dev/hdg Note, this will wipe anything out on the drive. There is also a non-destructive write, check the manpage for badblocks(8). This operation usually takes 12 hours or so on a 400GB drive, if this passes & short+long tests pass without error, the drive is probably OK for the time being. Also, what does smartctl -a /dev/hda for each of your drives show? Justin.