Preclear and badblocks 1.42 integration for preclearing disks.


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Joe, I have started to play with weebotech's advice for using badblocks in addition to your preclear.  Is it possible to use them together?

 

>>The last part of the 4 pass write is 0x00 just like Joe's DD and the preclear.

>>This means after a badblocks 4 pass test you can just write the MBR/Partition and preclear signature.

 

With the badblocks 1.42 - 4 pass write test, is it possible to have preclear_disk.sh just write the preclear signature since it has no need to write zeroes to the entire disk as badblocks has already done that?

 

I am testing badblocks 1.42 and want to know best how to integrate it with preclear_disk.sh

 

thanks...

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Joe, I have started to play with weebotech's advice for using badblocks in addition to your preclear.  Is it possible to use them together?

 

>>The last part of the 4 pass write is 0x00 just like Joe's DD and the preclear.

>>This means after a badblocks 4 pass test you can just write the MBR/Partition and preclear signature.

 

With the badblocks 1.42 - 4 pass write test, is it possible to have preclear_disk.sh just write the preclear signature since it has no need to write zeroes to the entire disk as badblocks has already done that?

 

I am testing badblocks 1.42 and want to know best how to integrate it with preclear_disk.sh

 

thanks...

 

+1

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I've been using it since the first discussion about badblocks. I typically run the 4-pass destructive, then an abbreviated preclear using Joe's script. I can't remember the exact options for preclear as I'm not at the machine to check the manpage, but I believe you can skip the post read.

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preclear_disk.sh -n /dev/sd?

 

Skips the pre-read and post-read phases.  What it doesn't skip is the writing of zeroes to the entire disk.  I am currently running a badblocks 4 pass test on a 3tb WD eurs drive.  It looks like it will take 70+ hours to complete.  Then preclear will take another 8 hrs to rewrite the zeroes that badblocks has just done.  I would just like to know how do you skip the writing zeroes part when you run preclear.

 

Then my final question is, once we have simplified this integration of badblocks and preclear, have we found the holy grail to pretesting new drives? 

 

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preclear_disk.sh -n /dev/sd?

 

Skips the pre-read and post-read phases.  What it doesn't skip is the writing of zeroes to the entire disk.  I am currently running a badblocks 4 pass test on a 3tb WD eurs drive.  It looks like it will take 70+ hours to complete.  Then preclear will take another 8 hrs to rewrite the zeroes that badblocks has just done.  I would just like to know how do you skip the writing zeroes part when you run preclear.

 

Then my final question is, once we have simplified this integration of badblocks and preclear, have we found the holy grail to pretesting new drives?

 

I am in hour 52 of badblocks on my first 3TB (a Seagate) showing 54% done of pass #4.

 

~Whip

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  • 4 weeks later...

so this may be a stupid question, but do you guys actually get a display of the percentage complete using badblocks. All i get is  block count / total.

 

I invoke it with 'badblocks -svw /dev/sdX' which is supposed to give the percentage of the pass you're on.

 

Also, anyone else have the total blocks of a 3TB drive appear as '-1364700713'. It doesn't seem to affect functionality, it just seems weird.

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I believe Joe L is exploring the use of badblocks. See other thread.

If it can be integrated, at least part of the preclear could use badblocks for pattern writing, then the rest of preclear could be used for a final read (or skipped) and writing the preclear signature.

 

 

My recommendation would be to have badblocks do the pattern write/read tests.

simplify preclear to capture smart before,  capture smart after, present the current (diffed) values to the user and write the signatures.

 

 

What I like about the DD is it tells you how fast it is reading/writing to the drive.

I hope to add that to badblocks one day so that you can get an idea of max speed reading or writing.

If it drops to a very low value you know it's stuck in some point and can look at the syslog.

 

 

As much as I would like to do it, it will be a while before I can build another unRAID server since all my stuff was destroyed due to sandy. 

 

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