Catastrophic disk failure, where was smartd?

[dwight at supercomputer.org]

On Thursday 27 March 2008 10:12:14 am Roger Heflin wrote:

> Some of the UPS self-tests are good enough to catch the batteries
> going bad and warn you, and some of them are not, the way you
> learn about it is when it fails to work.

Yes, there are lower-bounds to battery life which are quite variable.  
My point was that the upper-bounds are fixed. These are limited by 
the technology used. And after 5 years of battery usage, the UPS's 
ought to be giving a signal that the battery must be replaced.

I can't tell you how many UPS's I've seen that are supposedly good, 
but have 5+ year old batteries in them. People are honestly 
surprised that they don't work, as there's no indication that 
something is wrong.

You don't need to run a self-test or wait until it fails after that 
time period. But before then, I would agree with you.

    -dwight-