From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 18 16:46:53 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7416416A401 for ; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:46:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from illoai@gmail.com) Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com (ug-out-1314.google.com [66.249.92.171]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0949113C448 for ; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:46:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from illoai@gmail.com) Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id 71so382747ugh for ; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:46:51 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=Rhw9D5XQwdXtrynAhnjsNQi5E5yvKvSBHg4L9xzXPt10cOrzDZ71UknblcbGQIOV/ocGBTNZz9UL8fGNFp54/lJA0XC15mXAA+JnvK/1AKnsNfJh3bPdCRXl7OFSe0t7KwL+/u+cr3AbmHu9wDj91phOSctIC0v54Ops5UL05Ck= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=LJTH8Zx/iQ7qnEPXFva3iRiYYAKoliN1eAeEy6zFiTORLitbvrILh04e91whIh3sqvAm5yQO9wbikM0s30gaK24BZTuaDC4Ub5wg4U40MT/MOtQyp282A0Q5cX54nakWkEo3uykUYL7HaFIuW+YnGp6j9FZ1mpzIJqMztwiI+Z8= Received: by 10.82.186.5 with SMTP id j5mr1070383buf.1176914810218; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:46:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.82.185.16 with HTTP; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:46:50 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:46:50 -0500 From: "illoai@gmail.com" To: "Doug Poland" In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20070417134620.0261dac0@mail.computinginnovations.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <52060.69.129.174.18.1176828969.squirrel@email.polands.org> <6.0.0.22.2.20070417134620.0261dac0@mail.computinginnovations.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org, Derek Ragona Subject: Re: Exercising ATA disks in hopes of revealing errors X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:46:53 -0000 On 17/04/07, Derek Ragona wrote: > At 11:56 AM 4/17/2007, Doug Poland wrote: > >Hello, > > > >I've just come into possesion of a bunch of 80GB ATA drives. I'd like > >to quickly and efficiently test each drive to see if it's free of > >errors and suitable for deployment in non-critical workstations. > > > >Using FreeBSD 6.x as a testing platform, what tools do people use to > >stress-test disk drives? I've searched ports and done some googling > >but nothing stands out. > > Use the manufacture's utilities to test the drives. Each manufacturer has > bootable test and stress utilities. I have used this: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ AFIK, there isn't much in FreeBSD for this sort of low level diagnostics, ubcd boots faster, and given a decent junk machine, you can test 3 hard drives per reboot*. If you can hunt down a pci ata card, you can probably manage quite a few more. Having an 80-wire cable is nice for some of the diagnostics (if your junk machine isn't very old it will be pretty unlikely to have a 40 wire cable, so ignore this anyway). If you really want to use freebsd, the other suggestions to use ports/sysutils/smartmontools and dd (personally I use ports/sysutils/sdd for its -inull flag) are probably what I would follow. * Unless you can boot from a scsi cdrom. -- --