How To Check on Health of Server's Hard Drives?

[mrosen]

Hi,

> "[Howie]" wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> How To Check on Health of Server's Hard Drives?
>
> I remember back in the old daze (er, days) I used to be able to check
> on the health of the server's hard drives by looking at the stats of
> redirection/redirected blocks.

That was 10 yeras ago, when such activity was still the job of the OS.
That's no longer the case for many many many years. All sort of error
recovery and block redirection happens completely internal to the HD,
without the OS having any idea about it. Consequently, modern Netware
versions don't even have the ability to redirct defect blocks within the
OS anymore, as any HD that produces read or write errors visible to the
OS is already so broken that it's essentialy dead.

Now, of course there are options to access the drive internal
redirection statistics via SMART. but no such *general* tool exists for
Netware. It depends on the HW Vendor (specifically of the controller),
if they deliver such management tools for Netware, which many do.
*Additionally* almost every BIOS has the option to track the SMART
status of a HD, but that will only alert you of a failing drive on a
reboot.


CU,
--
Massimo Rosen
Novell Product Support Forum Sysop
No emails please!
http://www.cfc-it.de