-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2008-10-30 at 15:34 +0100, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 14:34 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Try running a selftest on the drive: smartctl -t short /dev/hdx. Then display the results wit: h smartctl -a /dev/hdx
Is this test non-destructive in the event of a problem?
Yes. It is read only, AFAIK.
Can it be done when the disk is being used?
Yes.
The man page implies the 'short' test can be done during normal operation. Anyone done that and lived to tell?
Me. The short and the long. It is designed for such use. However... Recent disks (the test is run by the disk itself, not the computer) run a surface test as part of the long test; older disks I think did not. Which means that the disk will be very busy looking at himself, and thus very unresponsive during that phase. Mine looks as if hanged, but it is not. Don't power off or reset the machine till the end. Better if you stops some tasks and daemons during that test (mail, for instance).
It is the root disk on a system. It would have to be, no? As such, I am exercising extreme caution.
Running those tests periodically is generally considered a good thing. The messages you saw I don't think are important. Notice that if the temperature changes just one degree from one check to the next, it is reported. This is absurd, IMO. Also the disk is continuously having minute read errors when reading, and correcting them. This is expected and normal. Only when this error rate goes up consistently you have to worry. How do you know when the values are important? I don't know! :-) But simple use --health and the program should tell you. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkKGmAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WDwgCffrD7F3aCbWx6g5xQD+aYZ2GU 698AoISvND6ktkLRYKr2OzXSFNgVazQH =HlPm -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org