Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: How Do You Test Storage Media?

Posted by timothy on from the give-her-some-storage-tarot-cards dept.

First time accepted submitter g7a writes "I've been given the task of testing new hardware for the use in our servers. For memory, I can run it through things such as memtest for a few days to ascertain if there are any issues with the new memory. However, I've hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to testing hard disks; there seems to be no definitive method for doing so. Aside from the obvious S.M.A.R.T tests ( i.e. long offline ) are there any systems out there for testing hard disks to a similar level to that of memtest? Or any tried and tested methods for testing storage media?"

2 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by headhot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even if your storage passes the test, it could fail the next day. What you should be doing is designing your storage to gracefully handle failure, like RAID 5 with spares.

    1. Re:Why? by gregmac · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even if your storage passes the test, it could fail the next day. What you should be doing is designing your storage to gracefully handle failure, like RAID 5 with spares.

      And then what you should test is that it actually notifies you when something does fail, so you know about it and can fix it. You can also test how long it takes to rebuild the array after replacing a disk, and how much performance degradation there is while that is happening.

      --
      Speak before you think