[Tfug] OT: Disk testing

[Adrian]

On Monday 23 October 2006 20:29, Ronald Sutherland wrote:
[snip]
> 
> Not sure if you were going to do the testing or someone else, or how 
> many units needed tested. What I have in my mind is a PC (or more as 
> needed) with 2-5 mobile docks. The operator installs the HD's in dock, 
> plugs them in PC and turns on the power. The test runs automatically 
> after boot and unmounts all HD's at end of test, leaving PASS/FAIL info 
> on screen and log (or stuffs it into a network server). The test 
> operator then powers off the PC and removes HD's. If a surface scan is 
> anything like mirroring then that takes me a long time on >60GB HD's.
[snip]
> The fixture is a mid tower PC case with 2 to 5 5-1/4" mobile docks 
> mounted. You don't have to mount the HD's in the dock carrier, just plug 
> in the IDE cable and power, set the HD down in carrier, and slide the 
> carrier into the case.


OK... so I;ve been lurking in this for a while and figure it;s time to chime 
in with my own ideas... I think you are making this way to hard. The problem, 
as you seem to say, is that you want to test IDE (not SATA) drives in a quick 
and efficent manner. The problem, of course, being that IDE is not 
hotswap-able.

The answer is to use something that is hotswap-able... Get an IDE->Firewire 
enclosure and be done with it. Either a bunch of single internal swappable 
bays, such as the following:

http://granitedigital.com/catalog/pg31_firewiresmarthotswapbay.htm

Or a JBOD array like the following:

http://granitedigital.com/catalog/pg22a_firewireidehotswapraid_1.htm

(Not a specific recommendation... just the first thing I found searching 
quickly.)

The Firewire connection will be fast enough for several simultanious drives, 
is hotswap-able, and appears as a standard SCSI-like disk under Linux. Hack 
together a quick BASH or PERL script that loops forever, periodically checks 
for new devices, and then runs a child "badblocks -n" on found drives. If the 
child doesn;t return any errors (or perhaps a minimum number of errors), then 
the drive is fine and report a message to such effect to the user.

Adrian