-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2008-06-17 at 21:32 -0230, TerraNova 66 wrote:
I've been looking at smartctl. I have a feeling it might work best in runlevel 3. I did try smartctl -a /dev/sda6 and got back a "no errors" report. I also tried smartctl --test=short /dev/sda6 but I didn't see any report afterwards. Looks like I have some more reading to do. Oh, well.
It works while you work. You can remain in level 5. System may get slow at times, of course, because the disk will be busy. The test is run by the disk firmware transparently to the cpu or OS (the disk then must have a small cpu, I guess). If you trigger a short test, the output message should tell you an estimate of the time it will take (a minute or two). If you run "smartctl - --log=selftest /dev/sda6" it will report the amount of test it has run already, or done. Actually, when done it doesn't say much more than good or no good. If the short test was good, run the long one. nimrodel:~ # smartctl --log=selftest /dev/hda smartctl version 5.1-4 Copyright (C) 2002 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Self-test log, version number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short off-line Completed 00% 5069 - # 2 Short off-line Completed 00% 4424 - # 3 Short off-line Completed 00% 1868 - # 4 Short off-line Completed 00% 345 - #21 Extended off-line Test in progress 90% 5069 - However, if the cable or the board is suspect, I would use the disk manufacturer external test. For example, Seagate has one, that is usually burnt to a CD or floppy; you boot it, it has a small operating system (probably msdos), and it runs basically the same tests SMART does, but from the CPU, giving more verbose data. It can also test the cable and connector. I suppose every manufacturer have their own test utility. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIWF52tTMYHG2NR9URAlcEAJ4j+SBf+8+AnpxqC45xHMmGOwLYVgCfWK4C V9Co2pzbaTvuwTDofGE1wPY= =uHt2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org