Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

chane · 2006-03-11 00:33:21

Anyone know of a good hard drive burn in application?

We just got a new hard drive (SATA) and installed it into production 5 days ago (after running it for 2 weeks in a test environment). Well, that doesn't look like it stressed it enough. It failed today.

We went back to our old setup for the short term. I now have another drive to install; but I want to test/burn it in a little longer.

Thanks in advance,
Chris....

cactus · 2006-03-11 00:38:34

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

There are several HD test utilities on the CD.
From disk wipers (multi-pass) to burn in utilities.

Give it a spin. <lame cd joke>

Gullible Jones · 2006-03-11 01:36:35

Wait a minute... I'm not exactly a hardware jock, but I have to ask, what's the point of burning in something that's already failed? :?

Romashka · 2006-03-11 09:00:00

The best tool for checking HDDs is MHDD (there seems to be some problems with site now but you can find it elsewhere).
This tool can spot problems that other tools don't see. (DOS only)

For recovering lost partitions I use TestDisk. (Linux/DOS/WinNT)

Both tools are on Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren's Boot CD.
With these two tools (and some other that are on these CDs) I tested and recovered more than 100 HDDs!

clarence · 2006-03-11 13:45:39

A hard drive burn-in tool? Surely you jest....
I've never "burnt in" a hard drive and I've never had one fail.

chane · 2006-03-11 23:59:08

Thanks for the suggestions cactus and Romashka. I'll be checking those out.

Guillible Jones wrote:

Wait a minute... I'm not exactly a hardware jock, but I have to ask, what's the point of burning in something that's already failed?

Kinda funny....

No, we have gotten a second hard drive and want to try to minimize the chance of failure.

clarence wrote:

A hard drive burn-in tool? Surely you jest....
I've never "burnt in" a hard drive and I've never had one fail.

Wish I had the same experience (and did until this one)...

Until this one, I hadn't had a failure either (we even used it for two weeks before turning it lose in production).

Now that we have had one fail and over 50 people doing nothing while we did a restore (and lost a little data since our last backup), I want to burn in a new drive now with a little more rigour than putting it in our test environment.

Very shortly we are going to start using a RAID array (very easy to justify cost vs. lost productivity). But that is going to take a couple of weeks (?) while we learn about RAID. We don't have experience with RAID and I want to see it work in action (test env) and work through the fail scenarios (pull a hard drive, etc...) before I put it into our production mix. I want to work out our monitoring process (of the array) and what we do in the event of a failure.

We also need to decide whether to use mirror or stripped array.

Chris....

chane · 2006-03-12 00:05:17

In case someone else wants to know, I found the mhdd program at http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Lone_Wolf · 2006-03-12 14:34:26

We also need to decide whether to use mirror or stripped array.

Raid 1 (Mirror) is safer but you can only use half of the diskspace.
Raid 0 (Striped ) is fast and allows to use all hd space, but is unsafe.

If you have 4 HDD of same size available, you can have both fast and safe by making a Raid 0 + 1.

example : B is mirror of A , D is mirror of C . A & C form a stripe setraid.
In this case 1 drive failure will pose no problem at all (until #2 fails).

Incase you want to use diskspace more efficient, check out RAID 5.

chane · 2006-03-12 23:40:50

Thanks for the info.

After reading a lot last night we'll probably try RAID 5 with 3 disks. Now I just need to find a sata controller to use.

Thoughts on having a spare disk in the case? I'm probably not going to do it; but am thinking about it...

Chris....

Romashka · 2006-03-13 13:51:59

We are going to build new file server on Intel's 6-ch (or 8-ch if we find place to buy it) SATA2 RAID controller with 128MB cache on-board. There is also almost the same controller from LSI.
6 300GB SATA2 HDDs in RAID 5 mode will give us 1.5TB storage space.

As for built-in SATA RAID controllers on most new desktop motherboards - they are not much better than software RAID. I would recommend to use pure hardware RAID. There are good 4/6/8-ch SATA/SATA2 controllers from Intel and LSI.

chane · 2006-03-14 02:18:42

Turns out the second drive failed after 2 1/2 days of going through PC Checks burn in test. I "restarted" the tests after a power down/up and it seems to be running the burn-in test just fine again. I wonder if there is something else going on...maybe some other piece of our hardware is causing a conflict or not up to snuff. Thoughts?

Dual P III
PCI bus is 33MHz
1 GB Ram (2 512MB boards)
Linux 2.6.12
Sata - WD Raptor WD740 (74GB 10,000 RPMs)
Sayba Controller (LSI chip set)

Not that it matters; but this system has been running for years with an IDE drive just fine.

Chris....

cactus · 2006-03-14 02:51:10

2.1.12 !!
Update your kernel! 2.4.x is damn stable, if you are worried about the 2.6 kernel.

chane · 2006-03-14 03:53:13

:oops: fat fingers...meant to type - 2.6.12 (changed in original message)

Arch Linux

#1 2006-03-11 00:33:21

Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#2 2006-03-11 00:38:34

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#3 2006-03-11 01:36:35

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#4 2006-03-11 09:00:00

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#5 2006-03-11 13:45:39

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#6 2006-03-11 23:59:08

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#7 2006-03-12 00:05:17

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#8 2006-03-12 14:34:26

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#9 2006-03-12 23:40:50

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#10 2006-03-13 13:51:59

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#11 2006-03-14 02:18:42

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#12 2006-03-14 02:51:10

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

#13 2006-03-14 03:53:13

Re: Hard Drive Burn In Tool?

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