On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 10:21:39AM +1100, Andrew Cutler wrote: > Unfortunately the answer presented itself very soon after posting the > message. > > I pulled the hard drive out of the box, and tried to format it in a > Windows machine. It occurred to me that the drive had not been formated > and therefore had not had data written to all parts of the disk. > > Half way through the format I got an 'Unsafe removal of device' message, > and upon reboot the drive was TOTALLY dead. > > It would be nice if FreeBSD had a SMARTY utility - it would have allowed > me to possibly detect this failure. I've been told that work is underway > to write one and it might be ready for 5.0. >
Mmm. Well to pass on something I do with every new disk I buy. If I do not have it already I get the diagnostics for it from the disk manafacturers website, which they all have for free. I then run all the tests on the disk and format it. These are almost always standalone boot images that fit on a DOS floppy. Later on it is always handy if you suspect disk problems -- then you can run the non-destructive drive tests as well. I do as many other kinds of test as possible on new hardware before I start using the machine (usually one I am buiding) -- on the fairly well-known principle that anything electronic or electro-mechanical usually fails early in it's life if it is borderline. [ As an aside this is harder with memory, the famous Memtest86 program gives false positives on certain hardware combinations and on certain tests. ] -- Regards Cliff Sarginson The Netherlands [ This mail has been checked as virus-free ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
