[SunRescue] Re: Hard drive testing

[BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak]

> >I am looking for either a hardware or software based hard disk testing
> >solution for my workshop.
> 
> Since this is a sun list ;-) I'd recommend using the analyze option of the 
> format command. It comes with all (?) versions of Solaris. There are 
> various read, read/write/compare options that can be set/used.

I would not recomend it, myself, for the following reasons...

1.  It is brain dead.  It won't get the drive information correctly,
    and if you don't have the magick format.dat tome around to find
    an approximation thereto, you will mostly get the formats wrong,
    especially the first time, and on unknown drives.  If you have
    standard Sun drives, it is OK.

2.  It requires a running OS.  What do you do if the OS is down?
    Chase after boot tapes, boot cd's, boot floppies, and pray.

3.  If you make any sort of information misteak, it happily tries
    to format it and then at the end says, oops, you goofed.

4.  On really messed up drives, it has a hard time reading the
    manufacturer's prom error table.

I have had maybe a .300 batting average trying to use sun format
to do drives.  That is why I use a VAX instead.  It does it right,
the first time, every time.  Sun's format just can't do that in my
hands, reliably, especially with unknown drives and drives that are
not in the format.dat tome.

Yeah, I know, it is heresy to suggest that, but that has been my
findings, especially on the olden suntoyz, and especially on non-
officially-supported Sun drives.

Also, someone needs to do a cannonical sort on the format.dat
tome, by drive type or by manufacturer/drive type.  That would
make it much more useful.

The old VAXstations are about the closest thing I have found to
a good generic drive low-level formatter for ANY kind of single-
ended scsi drive that you can get mated up to the beast.  After
the VAX does a real format on it, then the Sun formatter can usually
handle the drive correctly.

Caveat... I like suntoyz, but the old VAXentoyz have it hands down,
this time, for hard drive formatting, in my hands.

Bob