[nycbug-talk] how to test dying disks?

[Dave Steinberg]

>> 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.  :-)
>
> I didn't find this tool, but I did find /sbin/atacontrol FreeBSD.   
> Typing atacontrol cap channel drive  (e.g. atacontrol cap 0 0 )  
> returns a bunch of info including SMART status.  Mine says Support:  
> yes Enable: no.   Anyone know how to enable SMART?

They're the same tools basically, OpenBSD just calls it atactl.  On  
OpenBSD at least, the man page has details about enabling smart, and  
reading the values (and a suggestion for a super-simple monitoring  
script via cron).

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi? 
query=atactl&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&arch=i386&forma 
t=html

Regards,
-- 
Dave Steinberg
http://www.geekisp.com/