Stress Testing Hard Drives

[John D. Frakes]

So what label would come on out of box failure drives?  The best thing I can think of is to partiton the drive and format with ext3, setting the block size low and performing a bad block check.   Also do some reasearch into SMART and see if you can use smartds to log possible failures.   Depending on the drive manufacturer, some log way before the failure.  

-john frakes

-----Original Message-----
From: "Billy Crook" <billycrook at gmail.com>
To: "Geoffrion, Ron P [IT]" <Ron.Geoffrion at sprint.com>
Cc: kclug at kclug.org
Sent: 6/26/2007 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives

I think they should lable hard drives with their halflife.

On 6/26/07, Geoffrion, Ron P [IT] <Ron.Geoffrion at sprint.com> wrote:
>
>  MTBF is a measure of certainty.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ron Geoffrion
> 913.488.7664
>
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* kclug-bounces at kclug.org [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Billy Crook
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 26, 2007 11:45 AM
> *To:* Jonathan Hutchins
> *Cc:* kclug at kclug.org
> *Subject:* Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives
>
> There's nothing quite as reassuring as uncertainty.
>
> On 6/26/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins at tarcanfel.org > wrote:
> >
> > I think the only thing that stress testing a drive would do would be to
> > move
> > it closer to it's failure point.  Either that will be early, in which
> > case it
> > might possibly happen while testing, not quite as early, in which case
> > it
> > will happen just after installation instead of a week after
> > installation, or
> > it will be later in the drive's life - in which case it will just happen
> > a
> > bit sooner than it would have.
> >
> > About the only use I can see for this would bet to stress test a few
> > examples
> > of a certain model of a drive to failure, and see what the MTBF is.
> >
> > There are also environmental factors to consider.  Testing the drive in
> > an
> > open, bench-configured computer really doesn't give you any information
> > about
> > how it will perform in a closed case sandwiched between two other hot
> > drives.
> > This is one reason that some manufacturer's well intentioned MTBF
> > estimates
> > are inaccurate.
> >
> > Frankly, throwing it off a high building seems just as informative.
> >
> > If you can write a pattern to the drive and it passes fsck, and you can
> > repeat
> > this two or three times, that is going to be about as good a test as you
> > can
> > usefully perform.  A drive that will function that well is an
> > unpredictable
> > distance from failure.
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>
>