[ALUG] How to exercise a disk drive?

[Chris G]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:17:43AM +0100, Tim Green wrote:
> 2009/8/11 Chris G <cl at isbd.net>:
> > Are there any disk exercising/testing programs for Linux?  Well, I'm
> > sure there are, so does anyone have any recommendations?
> >
> > I want to stick a couple of old (as in I have used them in systems now
> > defunct) IDE disk drives into my Linux box and make sure that there is
> > nothing radically wrong with them.  They're not *that* old, 160Gb and
> > 200Gb respectively.  Destructive (of data) teting is fine, I don't
> > even know at the moment whether they're ex-Windows or ex_linux.
> 
> Read up about SMART and "man smartctl". Also try the disk's
> manufacturer's website for test tools (usually required before RMAs).
> 
Looks like what I need, thank you.  I hadn't realised that SMART can
do 'on demand' tests as well as monitoring drives and telling you that
they are getting towards a failure.

Installing smartmontools was easy as it has no dependencies and is
very small.

-- 
Chris Green