[mythtv-users] Recommended Disk Test

[John Drescher]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 3:16 PM, Dick Steffens <dick at dicksteffens.com> wrote:
> On 01/13/2015 11:47 AM, John Drescher wrote:
>>>
>>> Before I take it in to the hardware gurus I want to be sure I've run
>>> appropriate tests. I ran memtest with no errors.
>>
>> Did you do 1 pass or several days. 1 pass is not at all good at
>> finding marginal ram.
>
>
> It wasn't several days, but it was multiple passes. I'd have to look back
> through e-mails to see if I noted how many.
>
>
>>> What disk test should I run
>>> that will be a non-destructive test? And, when I run it, do I need to
>>> have
>>> the backend and MySQL shut down?
>>>
>> Can you post the SMART raw data for the disk
>>
>> smartctrl --all /dev/mydevice
>>
>> where my device is the drive you want to test possibly sda
>
>
> Thanks for recommending smartctl. I ran it with the -H option to verify it's
> there. The results of that are:
>
> rsteff at ThinkCentre-M58p:~$ sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
> [sudo] password for rsteff:
> smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [x86_64-linux-3.5.0-18-generic] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
>
> === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
> SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
>
>
> Is this a completely non-destructive tool? From what I've read it appears to
> be, but I have a number of recordings I would like not to lose, so I'd like
> confirmation that running smartctl --all /dev/sda is non-destructive before
> I start. Also, this is a 500GB drive. If smartctl is running will it
> interfere with recording later this evening, or with playback this evening
> (6 or 7 hours from now)?

smartctl --all /dev/sda


will not do a test but display the current smart. It will be over in a
second not interfere with a recording. The over PASS / FAIL smart
status is not a good predictor of failure but looking at the
individual smart attributes can tell you if the drive appears to be
operating abnormally.

John