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List:       gentoo-user
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-user] hp H222 SAS controller
From:       "Stefan G. Weichinger" <lists () xunil ! at>
Date:       2013-07-10 17:14:08
Message-ID: 51DD9660.9080906 () xunil ! at
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Am 09.07.2013 00:48, schrieb Paul Hartman:
> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <lists@xunil.at> wrote:
>> Does it make sense to apply some sort of burn-in-procedure before
>> actually formatting and using the disks? Running badblocks or something?
>>
>> I ask because I wait for that shiny new server and doing so might not
>> hurt before installing gentoo. Or is that too paranoid and a waste of time?
> 
> Initially I ran the SMART long test and it found no errors. Then I did
> badblocks read-only scan and it found some bad sectors. After that,
> SMART tests failed to complete due to "failure reading LBA xxxxxxxxx".
> I used hdparm to remap those sectors, but didn't feel entirely
> confident in the disk at that point in time.
> 
> So I ran the badblocks destructive read-write test and it completed
> (after a couple days) with zero errors! How can it be?
> 
> Checking the SMART statistics afterward, I can see now there are
> dozens of newly reallocated sectors. So that means the drive silently
> replaced those bad sectors with spares, which is good! That is what it
> is supposed to do! I don't feel happy about the fact that those bad
> sectors exist in the first place, but the drive did what it was
> designed to do when it encountered them.
> 
> After the r/w badblocks test cycle finished, I ran SMART long-scan
> again and this time it completed with no errors.
> 
> So I recommend to do the destructive read-write badblocks test, if you
> can afford the hours (or days) spent waiting for it to complete.
> 
> SMART alone did not detect the errors initially, but neither did
> badblocks actually identify the errors during its write test (because
> the drive hides it). But the combination of badblocks and the
> self-repairing code in the drive's firmware accomplished the goal of
> making my disk free of errors (logically).
> 
> Notes:
> 
> WARNING! Be careful to give the correct device name when doing the
> badblocks write test! There is no confirmation prompt! It immediately
> starts destroying data at the beginning of the disk.
> 
> If you have a disk with 4k sector size, be sure to tell badblocks to
> use a 4096 byte block size. It uses 1k block size by default, which
> can cause the test to be very slow! In my system badblocks with 1k
> block size read at 15MB/sec, while 4k block size read at over
> 160MB/sec! Using 1k block size on a 4k-sector disk also causes all
> errors to be reported 4 times each.
> 
> Good luck :)

Thanks for your explanations, Paul ... I will see if I have the patience
to wait for hours or days :-)

Stefan


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