SMART is not the whole story

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jgreco

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I wore out a couple of Northgate Omnikey keboards over the years. Now I use a Unicomp, and have a spare stored away, too.

I *have* some Northgate Omnikey keyboards! I might have actually liked them a little better than the Model M's, hard to recall, but they were unobtainable after a certain point.
 

joeschmuck

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I'm about to buy a new Unicomp 103 or 104 keyboard for work (on my dime). My current IBM and Unicomp keyboards only have 101 keys.
I'd love to hear a review from you about it once you get it. Sucks that you are buying it for work on your own dime but I really can relate. I'm on my computer all day long and these things make a difference.
 

joeschmuck

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Robert Trevellyan

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the Write Test seems to be destructive
I haven't been able to determine that, but it might not be, because each write is preceded by a read, so perhaps it just writes back what it read. I'll be happy to verify that in the next couple of days if nobody else gets to it first (can't do it today).
 

joeschmuck

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I haven't been able to determine that, but it might not be, because each write is preceded by a read, so perhaps it just writes back what it read. I'll be happy to verify that in the next couple of days if nobody else gets to it first (can't do it today).
What searches I've been able to do has not yielded any results stating anything definitive, everything seamed speculative. This being a Linux item, we should be able to look at the code to figure that out, right.
 

joeschmuck

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Additionally should we add something like this because the Disks Utility is not on FreeNAS:

1) If SMART reviles nothing and you still feel like you have a problem, do the following:
2) Run Solnet-Array-Test (I'd have to add a link to it).
3) Run Bad Blocks (Warning - Destructive Test).

Something like this. I'm not sure of any other FreeNAS testing which we can run off the top of my head. I may go ahead and attach an older hard drive to my system to test this stuff out, I certainly will not do this on my main system. Well I guess it's time to reconnect my test system and I have a lot of hard drives I could test this out on. So if you have something for me to try, let me know. I will work on building up and filling up some hard drives with data. I may be able to come up with a RAIDZ2 system to test on and maybe even have a drive which would fail. I cut open a drive years ago and added a lexan window. The drive was modified so we could see the heads move. Cool little project. I just don't recall if the drive was SATA or IDE. It's in the basement, I'll dig it out. I could also take the top off of an older drive if needed and get my dad to blow smoke into it. That should kill it.
 

jgreco

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Additionally should we add something like this because the Disks Utility is not on FreeNAS:

1) If SMART reviles nothing and you still feel like you have a problem, do the following:
2) Run Solnet-Array-Test (I'd have to add a link to it).
3) Run Bad Blocks (Warning - Destructive Test).

Something like this. I'm not sure of any other FreeNAS testing which we can run off the top of my head. I may go ahead and attach an older hard drive to my system to test this stuff out, I certainly will not do this on my main system. Well I guess it's time to reconnect my test system and I have a lot of hard drives I could test this out on. So if you have something for me to try, let me know. I will work on building up and filling up some hard drives with data. I may be able to come up with a RAIDZ2 system to test on and maybe even have a drive which would fail. I cut open a drive years ago and added a lexan window. The drive was modified so we could see the heads move. Cool little project. I just don't recall if the drive was SATA or IDE. It's in the basement, I'll dig it out. I could also take the top off of an older drive if needed and get my dad to blow smoke into it. That should kill it.

I'm also willing to put some more effort into solnet-array-test and extend it further. That kind of stuff is easy and relaxing for me. I might also have some other disk testing stuff around but they'll be C programs, and I'm less thrilled about providing precompiled binaries people can't readily inspect.
 

joeschmuck

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I would prefer to keep things as simple as possible and everything must be able to be run from FreeNAS otherwise we are just asking for some folks to say "well I don't have that hardware" or "it's too complicated".

As long as we are providing sound advice and clear instructions and able to get that person to clearly communicate what step failed and the error message, then I think we have a winner. Ummm, Chicken Dinner!

Right, but I think a live test will be easier. Just starting on that now, stand by ...
Roger Wilco
 

Robert Trevellyan

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  1. Created a mirror from two 80GB disks.
  2. Wrote about 12GB of data to it.
  3. Scrubbed.
  4. Rebooted in Ubuntu.
  5. Ran read/write benchmark on one of the 80GB disks.
  6. Rebooted in FreeNAS.
  7. Scrubbed.
Code:
BEFORE

[root@freenas] ~# zpool status benchmark
  pool: benchmark
state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h4m with 0 errors on Mon Jul  4 11:18:43 2016
config:

    NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    benchmark                                       ONLINE       0     0     0
      mirror-0                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
        gptid/265c9903-4211-11e6-b973-00219b2bc1fe  ONLINE       0     0     0
        gptid/2817f232-4211-11e6-b973-00219b2bc1fe  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

AFTER

[root@freenas] ~# zpool status benchmark
  pool: benchmark
state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h5m with 0 errors on Mon Jul  4 11:32:53 2016
config:

    NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    benchmark                                       ONLINE       0     0     0
      mirror-0                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
        gptid/265c9903-4211-11e6-b973-00219b2bc1fe  ONLINE       0     0     0
        gptid/2817f232-4211-11e6-b973-00219b2bc1fe  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

Result: read/write disk benchmark using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Disks app (gnome-disk-utility 3.10.0/UDisks 2.1.3) is non-destructive :cool:
 

joeschmuck

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I just finished up my test as well. I created a mirror of 2TB drives and filled them with about 50% full. I then booted into Ubuntu 14.04 as well and ran the Disks Utility Benchmark test with Writing. I ran it using 1000 samples and 25MB file size, and on both drives. Once done I rebooted into FreeNAS and performed a scrub. No issues. So apparently the write test is non-destructive, always a good thing.

I'm also willing to put some more effort into solnet-array-test and extend it further. That kind of stuff is easy and relaxing for me.
I would like to see a read/write test if that is okay. So yes, we would like your input.
 

Dice

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I'll offer just another data point of having very similar drop in read (and, or?) write speeds for a couple of drives, all checking out nicely on SMART test.
Most notably on WD Green Drives. I decided the drives were not to trust, and should be considered unusable.
RMA opportunities had expired by quite the margin... Drives were submitted to the sledgehammer treatment prior to hitting the recycling box for 'small electronics'.
 

Z300M

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I *have* some Northgate Omnikey keyboards! I might have actually liked them a little better than the Model M's, hard to recall, but they were unobtainable after a certain point.

I have a few Gateway 2000 AnyKey keyboards that I've bought used on eBay. Maybe not up to the quality of the Northgates (I never used one of those), but at least the F-keys are in the right place.

My first computer was a brown-case Osborne 1 (4MHz Z80 CPU, 64K RAM, 2 single-sided single-density 5 1/4" floppy drives), to which I added a 384K RAM disk module that sat in one of the floppy-disk storage pockets; I wrote my dissertation on it. I graduated to an AT clone with a 20MB drive and 1MB RAM, and thereafter -- except for notebooks -- I've built all my own machines.
 

gpsguy

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Yeah, I remember doing some work on the Osborne. It was a decent machine running CP/M and with the included software (dBASE II, WordStar, and Supercalc) it was a bargain. I think dBASE II cost me ~$699 for my IBM PC.

My first computer was a brown-case Osborne 1 (4MHz Z80 CPU, 64K RAM, 2 single-sided single-density 5 1/4" floppy drives),.
 

joeschmuck

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(dBASE II, WordStar, and Supercalc)
Wow, I remember those days. I used those quite a bit in my Navy days. dBase II and dBase III were some heavy hitters back in the day. WordStar, I remember the funky commands to save a document or open on. It reminds me of vi.

Thanks for the memory. You know, last night when I was laying in bed I was thinking about my first submarine. I walked myself from the bottom of the boat in the Operations compartment, all the way to the top and then headed back toward the Missile compartment. Eventually I put myself to sleep. I couldn't believe the stuff I remembered about the spaces, but then again it was our jobs to know everything. Just another memory thing.
 

Redcoat

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I'm using an OmniKey/Ultra to write this now ...
Thanks for the trip down memory lane - I had AppleII, Osborne1, a couple of Kaypro 10's for my US business, Commodore Pet for a UK business, then on to a personal AT ($3995) with coprocessor ($375) and extra 256K memory ($320) EGA ($524) and Tall Trees 2MB RAM card ($879) to run AutoCAD V2.17F ($2500) on a Core ATPlus 40MB HDD ($3195) with Wangtek Tape Backup ($1695) - all a bit over $19K list with the Houston Instruments pen plotter, cables and a 1200 baud Hayes modem - I found the bill for it the other day - I got $5,539.32 DISCOUNT on that '85 purchase! Built all my own desktops since then. Have a TRS80 portable that still works fine and a couple of Pioneer 18 disc SCSI CD changers underneath my desk as end stops for a row of tower machines and UPS's. My office closet has all sorts of computer-archeology memory joggers that I cannot bear to part with. I too am a pack-rat!
 
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Yeah, I had to pare down a lot of my old stuff a few years ago and steadily work through some stuff I still have. I think the oldest functional board I have is a Dual Pentium Pro 200Mhz. I HAD a Compaq Proliant circa 1998 or 1999 with a pair of dual Pentium Pro's but the BIOS battery died and the thing weighed so much I had to send it to the scrap heap. Still have the drives though SCSI the oldest seems to be from around 1998 and was probably original to the system running 4.3GB of speed.

When you have tech stuff you have to pack rat something though. Never know when you will pull out an old game that will not run in compatibility mode so to reminisce you throw Windows 98 or older on a super watt burner.
 
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