On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 18:39 +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Install the smartmontools package to get smartctl. Read the man file and use this tool to run a extended offline test of hda....Offline tests don't actually take the drive offline (they can just make it really slow) so you can do them when it is mounted...I strongly advise you read the man file first...but essentially the syntax is as follows.
Actually drifting off topic slightly..But something I'd recommend to anybody.
Set up the smartmontools in daemon mode...there are a couple of good howto's on the web but it's pretty simple to get them to run scheduled tests and mail root if any tests failed..I can't do it on my main machine because my SATA disks (or controller I'm not sure) aren't supported by the Smartmontools package.
Disks often fail over a period of time...if these tools can catch an error before total failure then it could save you a bit of a headache.
A lot of BIOS's support SMART but only in a very simplistic way and only during boot (also it is often disabled by default) they don't run the tests, but just report if any of the values go over threshold....What the tools do is far more thorough.