hard drive burn-in

[John Abreau]

> Matthew Gillen wrote:
>> I like to use SMART to do tests:
>> The 'long' SMART test reads every block on the disk,
>> and can take a very long time.
........
>> I have a cron job that runs a 'long' test every month on my file
>> server, so I guess it's not really a burn-in thing... :-)


What sort of impact does the SMART long test have on a production
server? Does the testing completely tie up the drive, or can the
system continue to function normally during the test?

I currently run cron jobs at 15-minute intervals on my servers that
run smartctl -H on each physical drive and mdadm --detail on
each RAID volume, and they generate no output unless they find
a problem.  It's better than not checking at all, but I'd like to do more
thorough monitoring in a way that won't overtax a production server.


Tom Metro <blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> Reading reviews of consumer grade drives makes me think that a bit a
> stress testing on any new or refurb drive is time well spent. There seem
> to be a lot of cases of infant mortality.


I've lost enough data from drive failures to convince me it's worth the extra
money to get better drives. Seagate's NS series "enterprise" drives are
optimized for reliable 24x7 operation, whereas their cheaper AS series
consumer-grade "desktop" drives are optimized for speed. Newegg sells
both types; at the moment, a 1 TB Barracuda NS series is $229, and
a 1 TB Barracuda AS series is $139.





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