User manual

SANtools® S.M.A.R.T. Disk Monitor (SMARTMon-UX)106
SANTOOLS® is registered in US Patent and Trademark Office No 3,107,854 All rights reserved.
the time this revision of the manual was placed online. If you need to perform self-tests of ATA/SATA disks on other
operating systems, then please contact us for status on extending this function to other operating systems.
SCSI vs. non-SCSI Protocols.
If the selected device is an ATA or SATA disk drive, then the self-test command will end with the letter 'a'. For most
self-tests, the concepts are the same whether running a SATA disk drive or a SCSI tape, and the commands are
nearly the same.
If you wish to run a background self-test (-steb, for example) on your boot disk, it is best that you bring the system to
single-user mode. This is not a requirement, and we have never crashed our O/S running a bactground self-test on
the booted device. As system I/O suspends the self-tests, and self-tests temporarily suspend system I/O, the tests will
take significantly longer to complete.
What do Self-tests Do?
The next paragraphs are paraphrased from the SCSI specifications. They will help you understand what self tests are,
what they perform, and how they interact with commands sent from the operating system.
The Short and Extended Self-Tests
The short self-test will run in less than two minutes, and it can be used as a sanity check to confirm whether or not a
questionable disk is bad. A goal of the extended self-test routine is to simplify factory testing during integration by
having devices perform more comprehensive testing without application client intervention. A second goal of the
extended self-test is to provide a more comprehensive test to validate the results of a short self-test, if its results are
judged by the application client to be inconclusive.
The criteria for the short self-test are that it has one or more segments and completes in two minutes or less. The
criteria for the extended self-test are that it is has one or more segments and that the completion time is vendor
specific. Any tests performed in the segments are vendor specific.
The following are examples of segments:
· An electrical segment wherein the logical unit tests its own electronics. The tests in this segment are vendor
specific, but some examples of tests that may be included are: a buffer RAM test, a read/write circuitry test,
and/or a test of the read/write head elements.
· A seek/servo segment wherein a device tests it capability to find and servo on data tracks.
· A read/verify scan segment wherein a device performs read scanning of some or all of the medium surface.
The tests performed in the segments may be the same for the short and extended self-tests. The time required by a
logical unit (i.e. SCSI or fibre channel device) to complete its extended self-test is reported via a mode page. Our
software will report the estimated time to complete the self-test after you initiate the test. Per the SCSI spec, the
extended self-test must complete in two hours or less, and the short test must complete in under two minutes. If you
do not have time for the device to finish the test, you may always abort the test. This test time is reported by the
device, and not the result of an estimate made by our software, so if the number is not accurate, chances are high
you have background I/O attempting to interact with the device while the test was running.
Foreground mode
When the user sends a command specifying a self-test to be performed in the foreground mode, the device server
shall return status for that command after the self-test has been completed. While performing a self-test in the
foreground mode, the device server shall respond to all commands except INQUIRY, REPORT LUNS, and
REQUEST SENSE with a CHECK CONDITION status, a sense key of NOT READY and an additional sense code of
LOGICAL UNIT NOT READY, SELF-TEST IN PROGRESS.
If a device server is performing a self-test in the foreground mode and a test segment error occurs during the test, the
device server shall update the Self-Test Results log page (reported by smartmon-ux -C) and report CHECK
CONDITION status with a sense key of HARDWARE ERROR and an additional sense code of LOGICAL UNIT
FAILED SELF-TEST. The application client may obtain additional information about the failure by reading the
Self-Test Results log page. If the device server is unable to update the Self-Test Results log page, it shall return a
CHECK CONDITION status with a sense key of HARDWARE ERROR and an additional sense code of LOGICAL
UNIT UNABLE TO UPDATE SELF-TEST LOG.