[ale] read after write verify?, data scrubbing procedures

[mike at trausch.us]

On 10/25/2012 09:12 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> I guess, what's really bugging me, is that nothing we've discussed,
> outside of Spinrite or badblocks, actually verifies the drive's
> ability of the drive to write data before we actually TRUST it with
> data.

That depends on the application.  For your average household or 
workstation system, that is absolutely correct.

There are options at various layers that will allow you to force read 
verification of your writes.  Or you can do so yourself.  However, most 
of our computers would be useless to us if they did so at every write.

Therefore, what we do is we TOLERATE failure, and we mitigate it by all 
reasonable and practical means at our disposal.  If we do our jobs 
right, we do not lose data except in the most extreme and exceptional of 
circumstances, y'know, the ones where we may have bigger problems to 
worry about then whether the data survived.

> Now I know, for SURE, that I'm going to burn in those replacement 1
> TB drives with Spinrite.

Breaking drives in is a smart move, whether you use SpinRite or just use 
it daily for a few weeks.  I tend to do the latter.  I keep spare drives 
handy, have a store nearby if I must, and can replace the HDD and 
restore my data in my workstation fast enough that it's not going to 
bother me unless I'm doing it more than a couple times a month, and if 
that's happening, I'm changing vendors anyway.  :-)

	--- 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”