[ale] disk drive diagnostics nirvana - NOT - I have questions

[mike at trausch.us]

On 10/22/2012 06:12 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>   Since the HDD
> controller can usually only discover read / write problems when you
> actually access the sector, I've developed a practice over the years to
> read and write every sector on the hard drive a few times per year.
>
> If the sector
> doesn't read, Spinrite uses advanced statistical algorithms to try up to
> 2000 times to recover the data.

Not really.  It sends the same command over and over again, because it 
has no direct control of anything (it is, just like BIOS, just like the 
Linux kernel, only allowed to talk to the IDE/SATA controller, not to 
the drive directly).  It is therefore constrained by the controller!

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say since SpinRite isn't what this 
thread is about.

> The first thing I do when I get a new drive is write
> it with random data then Spinrite it about 6 times to thoroughly burn it
> in.  I then follow up with one such procedure every 4 - 6 months.

Save yourself a lot of time, and instead, use Linux mdraid and a pair of 
drives.  The drives will be scrubbed every week, then, and errors will 
be detected and sent via network very quickly.

You could also use Reed-Solomon error correction layered on top of a 
block device, format that with a filesystem, and then not have to worry 
about it, since errors will then be corrected by the filesystem.  Add a 
cron job to scrub weekly and mail warnings and errors off to you, and 
boom---automatic, provably robust recovery from hard drive failures. 
And it's a lot easier than your manual solution.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                    --- Carveth Read, “Logic”