Am 09.07.2013 00:48, schrieb Paul Hartman: > On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <li...@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