Hard Drive Burn-In Process

[jmanin]

Quick question. After running bad blocks, is it still necessary to have kernel geometry flags enabled when running the S.M.A.R.T. long test afterwards? I jumped ahead and rebooted the machine before I realized I have more tests to do.

 

[cyberjock]

Quick question. After running bad blocks, is it still necessary to have kernel geometry flags enabled when running the S.M.A.R.T. long test afterwards? I jumped ahead and rebooted the machine before I realized I have more tests to do.

Uh, your question is nonsensical to me.

No clue what geom flags you are talking about (there's quite a few). I also have no clue what running a SMART long test wold have to do with the flags, at all. The flags are for the geom software and the SMART tests are handled by the hard drive itself. So I don't see any reason to mention SMART tests and the geom flags in the same sentence as they aren't related.

 

[jmanin]

I was following the steps outlined in the [How To] Hard Drive Burn-In Testing by quertymodo. The step before running bad blocks was to execute the command sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10. Then after running bad blocks next to run was smartctl long test. Now I understand the flags will revert back after a reboot. I wasn't familiar with smartclt and after some reading I was pretty sure the state of those flags wouldn't have any effect on the SMART test. I assumed they were only for the bad blocks test, but I thought I would ask to be sure. This is a learning experience for me and I know I'll be making some mistakes, I just wasn't looking forward to having to redo the burn-in process if need be. Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

Ah.. Ok. So I think I gave you the info you needed. Does what I said make sense?

 

[jmanin]

Yes it does. My understanding is smartctl is a tool that communicates to the hard drive's controllers and the short, conveyance, and long tests are run locally by the controller independent of the system. My disks are finally done, now it's time to get familiar with the software or in jgreco's words "...installing FreeNAS, setting up ZFS, and beating on that for awhile..." Thanks for the feedback.