[nycbug-talk] how to test dying disks?

[Jesse Callaway]

On Oct 20, 2004, at 2:27 PM, Dave Steinberg wrote:

>> I've got a new one for myself here, and am shouting out for a url or 
>> somesuch to point me in the right direction.  It's low priority here, 
>> this is for personal fun...
>>
>> I've got a fistfull of failing drives here.  I'm not sure exactly how 
>> to properly diagnose the broken drives, and don't want to trash the 
>> ones which are still funcitoning- but I'm even having problems 
>> booting with the drives plugged in (disk geometry crapola).
>>
>> Does anyone know any good shell utilities to diagnose and help me 
>> sort out which drives are good and bad, any BSD os?  Looking for 
>> something which justifies the time spent doing this over just 
>> purchasing some new drives...
>>
>> Perhaps tools I can use after booting from CD?  (btw, I'm stumped as 
>> I've grown up in the Mac world of drive repair, always simple and 
>> intuitive gui tools for this kind of thing when I need it...)
>
> Atactl can provide details on SMART values if your drives support it.  
> Then again, I've never really come across anything too interesting 
> from SMART diagnostics, but maybe I just haven't seen the right disks. 
>  It always felt like black magic to me, so I dunno.  :-)
>
> Regards,
> -- 
> Dave Steinberg
> http://www.geekisp.com/
>

SMART will at least tell you which ones are sketchy. Check the vendor 
IBM, WD, Seagate, Maxtor... they ought to have a floppy you can make 
with diagnostics. THe + here is that RMA is almost non-disputable if in 
the time limit.