User manual

Using S.M.A.R.T. Disk Monitor 125
SANTOOLS® is registered in US Patent and Trademark Office No 3,107,854 All rights reserved.
What is this test good for?
The data integrity tests are most useful for storage professionals who want to qualify hardware, test RAID controllers,
and insure data is in tact after stressing the storage, such as after a controller or HBA fail over test. System
administrators should consider running this test in qualifying hardware. You would not ordinarily run this as part of any
scheduled maintenance.
What about host overhead?
Generally very low CPU overhead, and high I/O overhead for the device that is being tested. One read or write
operation is sent per chunk CHUNKSIZE .
Is this a safe operation?
All data is destroyed on the selected device. Use this function wisely.
How long does this take?
This could run all night on a large disk drive. If you run the program in verbose mode, with the -scrubdiv flag,
then the program will tell you percent complete and remaining time after every 1% of completion.
What do data integrity errors look like?
If the data read is not equal to the data written for any byte, then the software will return specifics of the offset, what
was written, and what was read back from the device.
Notes
· These tests make no assumptions about 512-byte block sizes. If the device you wish to test is formatted for 520 or
528 bytes/block, and if your operating system and device drivers have no problems recognizing devices which are
not 512 bytes in size, then the software will work as expected.
· Like the -scrub family of commands, these tests are controlled by this software. That means the target device
can be any SCSI-family random access device, such as a Read/write DVD, USB memory stick, or disk drive.
· In the event of any non-zero sense key for the write phase, the program will record the error and block number,
then retry. After two retries, the program continues. Full details about all errors and warnings are returned with
-scrubdiv . If you run the -scrubdi version of the test then you only get totals.
· You may add the -16 command to force the test(s) to send 16-byte SCSI READ/WRITE commands rather than
the 10-byte versions, or add the -12 option to send the READ(12) and WRITE(12) commands.
1.35 Self-Test Diagnostics - WRITE SAME
Another feature added to the diagnostic suite in release 1.26 is support for writing data to the entire device. This
feature utilizes the SCSI-only WRITE SAME command which instructs the device to fill a block of data with a
user-specified pattern. (The command works on SCSI, SAS, SSA, and fibre channel random-access devices.
(SMARTMonUX will return an error if you attempt to perform this command on an unsupported device).
Both the -wsbyte and -wsbyteconfirm commands initiate the same WRITE SAME function. The
-wsbyteconfirm just suppresses the are-you-sure type message, which allows you to automate this data
destructive command. This function will write the pattern starting on block #0 of the disk, and it will continue through
the last addressable block. It will not write your pattern on reserved areas, nor will it write the pattern on blocks that
may go beyond the reported drive capacity . If you need to insure that your pattern writes every addressable block
on the disk, then you should send the command, -capacity 0 which will reset the disk to maximum addressable
capacity.
One would ordinarily use this command variant as part of a automated process. As this test is destructive, we suggest
you only use the -wsbyteconfirm command on systems and scripts that have been fully tested. We also allow you
to combine -wsbyte and -confirm on the same command-line. These options together are equivalent to the
-wsbyteconfirm command.
Add the optional -wsc operator if you want the program to immediately terminate the operation after the first error.
Usage
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