My desktop's 1T drive is approaching it's supposed EOL. I realise that time was, the bathtub curve meant that if a drive worked it probably would keep on working, but modern economics seems to mean that a component dies the day after its warranty expires. So I'm apprehensive. I see 2T and 3T drives no on sale for less than I paid for my 1T drive. Why I should consider them when I haven't filled my 1T drive I'm not clear. having a set of mirrored 1T makes more sense then a 2T on a single spindle. I'm using LVM so migrating LVs from oe drive to another is not a problem. HOWEVER .... What I am concerned about is initial reliability. My experience with new drives has never been good. It is one reason why I adopted LVM. The 1T drive I'm using is a replacement under warranty for a drive that threw an enormous amount of uncorrected bad blocks about a week into use. I still had the LVs on the older drive and had simply been mirroring. Upgrading from a 750G to a 1T meant that such problems showed up quickly. But a step from the 1T to a 3T might leave a lot of space never considered. Yes I know about the 'badblock' program. There are a few variants. But that isn't fast. I've used it on a 8G USB and it took a couple of days. OK that's USB not SATA speeds. But how long would it take to scan a 3T drive using the 'badblock' program? TOO-OO-OO-OO-OO long! A drives SMART capability should include some kind of scanning but I'm unclear as to how comprehensive it is. Can anyone fill me in on that? Googling I see a few suggested ideas but they don't seem to reassure me about this question of a 'new drive'. 'smartctl -h /dev/sda' just says "PASSED" which is nice but not detailed. 'smartctl --all /dev/sda' tells me a lot but doesn't seem to tell me what I'm looking for. I'm reluctant to try forcing a scan/test on my live drive. Is there a SMARTCTL command that does the equivalent of a 'badblocks' scan? -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org