Hard disk going-bad detection

Eric Anderson anderson at centtech.com
Tue Aug 29 02:14:38 UTC 2006


On 08/28/06 21:10, Matthew Hagerty wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I have a hard drive that every now and then makes a sound like the head 
> is moving from one extreme to the other, then parking.  It is hard to 
> explain, kind of a towk-kok-click with a metallic ring to it.  If you 
> have heard a drive do this before, you know the sound.  I heard a drive 
> do this to me a few months ago and it failed shortly thereafter.
> 
> I have 3 drives in the system so it is very hard to know which drive it 
> is, so in an attempt to get a new drive before the one fails out right, 
> is there any way I can test the drives in place?  One drive is primarily 
> my system disk (20G), the second (120G) has /usr mounted on it, and the 
> third (120G) is mounted, rsync'd, umounted every night to make a backup 
> of the other two.  So, the backup drive I can test no problem, even 
> destructively if necessary.  However, the two that make up the active 
> system I would like to be able to test without disrupting normal 
> operation if possible?  But, I'll take the box offline for a bit if 
> necessary.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated.



You didn't mention what type of drives, so I'll assume ATA.  Take a look 
at smartd.

Eric


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------


More information about the freebsd-hackers mailing list