[K12OSN] RAID Question

[Julius Szelagiewicz]

> Julius Szelagiewicz wrote:
>>
>>>> After that I test
>>>> the disk controller  by formatting them...
>>> This may be a superstition going back to the old days of having
>>> tracking
>>> information laid down in the formatting step - and controllers with
>>> slight differences, but I always do a low-level format on scsi drives
>>> when I move them to a machine with a different controller type or if I
>>> don't know where they were before.  It probably really isn't necessary
>>> any more but it does give the drive a chance to remap any questionable
>>> blocks transparently.  With IDE and SATA, I'm not sure if this is even
>>> possible.
>>>
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
>>> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
>>>
>> Yes, it is possible. Spinrite from Gibson Research is an unbelievably
>> good
>> product. I've been using it in its evolving incantations forever (since
>> my
>> first IBM PC XT) and it works. It is especially good at fixing track
>> layout to mach the drift of the heads. Worth the money and then some.
>> julius
>
> But is that relevant any more?  I thought current drives had permanent
> servo tracks embedded separately from the data and the heads followed
> them instead of having their own stepper concept.  If you have to spend
> money, I'm inclined to just toss the old questionable stuff and replace
> it since things have gotten so much better in the last few years.
>
>>
Les, the drives got much, much better, but they still fail. A move from
controller to controller should be always painless, but sometimes things
happen.
I've used Spinrite most often for data recovery, but I also have a few old
systems that I've just run it on and they got better and are still active.
The beauty there is that the need to get the boxes unracked and opened is
immediately obviated. I do configure NAS on those systems, but I never had
any problems with the drives that Spinrite fixed and deemed OK.
julius