[ale] what exactly does a long smart hdd test do?

[Justin Goldberg]

People in comp.ibm-pc.*.storage (can't remember the exact name as I
haven't read it in awhile) are constantly knocking SpinRite as
irrelevant on modern drives. But its still good for those older
drives, say pre-2003.

On 5/11/12, Ron Frazier (ALE) <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm running routine diagnostics on my hard drives. My normal practice is to
> run SpinRite on them, which reads each sector, then refreshes the magnetic
> fields by inverting and writing and inverting and writing them again (in the
> particular mode I'm using). Thus, every bit is tested both with a 0 and 1
> and all the original data is refreshed. I don't want to get into a
> discussion as to the merits of this at the moment. I'm convinced it's a good
> idea. My problem is that I have one computer that's so old and the bios is
> so old and the hdd is so big, that SpinRite complains because the bios
> cannot access the whole drive. So, SpinRite won't run. Once Windows or Linux
> starts up, those systems can access the whole hdd. However, SpinRite runs
> strictly at the dos / bios level from a bootable CD.
>
> At the very least, I want to do a surface analysis be reading each sector.
> That, at least, will let the hdd controller review each sector and determine
> if it thinks there are any problems. In Windows, I can start a chkdisk,
> either graphically or on the command line, and specify the surface analysis
> option, and it will accomplish my goal.
>
> My problem is on the Linux side of the fence. I don't know how to do what I
> want there. I need to force the hdd to read all the sectors on the EXT4 main
> partition as well as the swap partition. Of course, I'm wanting to do all
> this nondestructively. So, I'm wondering exactly what a long smart test
> does, and whether it will accomplish my goal. It not, what would you
> recommend?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>
> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very
> quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>


-- 

Justin Goldberg

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