[Tfug] OT: Disk testing

[Rich Smit]

What he said, but why bother even with enclosures? Just get a bunch of 
UBS2 or 1394 backs.
http://www.deltrontech.com/Firewire/1394IDE/1394IDE.htm
Grab some chunks of scrap wood from Lowes and a pocketful of screws and 
there's your custom enclosure.
R.

Adrian wrote:
> 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
> 
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