On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:17:43AM +0100, Tim Green wrote:
2009/8/11 Chris G cl@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.