I'm trying to assemble an array (raid 5) of 8 older, but not yet old age
ATA 120 gig disks, but there is intermittent flakiness in one or more of
the drives. Symptoms:
* Won't boot sometimes. Even after moving to 2 power supplies and
monitoring the amp spikes, sometimes I get "clicking" from 1-2 of the
drives after the startup.
* When initiating a SMART long test, so far two of them have:
+ passed 50-75% of the time
+ when "failed", didn't actually fail, just perpetually were
stuck at an arbitrary % of test remain.
+ If I cancel and restart the test, often they pass.
I've heard clicking from some drives when executing SMART long tests.
Doing 4 drives at a time, but still can't
isolate and don't want to use laborious "sit and listen by computer"
method to determine which are dying--would prefer a tool to detect the
issue.
I know there's a problem with one or more because my issues with my
primary array disappeared the minute I used LVM to remove these devices
(and upgrade to some larger/newer ones).
Two questions:
1) Is it smartest to isolate which drives are clicking and chuck them
into the wood chipper, given the circumstances?
2) Are there tools that are designed to determine if a drive is fit for
duty? dd_rescue et all seem focused on saving a dying drive; spinrite
seems to be controversial black magic marketing, etc. I could try the
manufacturer shipped tools but given their black box nature I have no
idea how much (or little) is being done by their tests. What do you
folks recommend?
Thanks in advance.
--Michael Stumpf
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