Re: [smartmontools-support]Testing Interval

[Bruce A. <ba...@gr...>]

Hi Chetan,

This is a very good question -- and I don't have a very good answer. If
you run self-tests too often, you risk wearing out the drive mechanics
because you are making lots of seeks and reads.  But if you run self-tests
too infrequently, you risk missing disk problems.

On our servers I run a short self-test once per day and a long self-test
once per week.  I could imagine running a long self-test at most once per
day.  Since a long test on a modern drive can take one or two hours, this
corresponds to giving the drive something like a 5 to 10% 'lifetime' load.

Cheers,
	Bruce


> I just started using the windows version of this tool to monitor my drives
> on a custom built PVR. It works great, thanks. Forgive me if this is a
> newbie question, but I wasn't able to find an answer on the list.
> 
> How often should I use "-t selftest" option? Is there a recommended
> interval? The reason I ask is so that I don't cause undue wear and tear on
> my drives, but still want to know if they are failing, so I can get my data
> off of them. Currently I have it running once every hour - the machine is
> running 24x7.
> 
> Thanks,
> Chetan.
> 
> 
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