Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Terbs on 04 February 2011, 10:50:18
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Hi all. especially comp experts ;D
I am trying to format a HDD (Sata)....it gets as far as 96% then stops.....is it fubared or is there a way of testing. :(
My personal thought was attaching it as a slave in another computer and running chkdsk on D;........would that work ????? ;)
I can't remember whether this is a new disk or has been formatted previously ::) My memory is not what it used to be ;D excuse to comp related pun ;D
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dont use it as system disk (c drive)..
attach to a working pc as secondary disk .. either use the windows disk management to (from my computer> right click >manage> disk management) or some free disk checking tools.. and find the exact location (sectors) , calculate the size and partition the disk accordingly .. a partition of %94-95 will be safe as I understand from your post..
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Is the format you're doing a 'full' format (takes a long while, writes over every sector of the disk) or just a regular format (just writes a FAT to the start of the disk)?
If it's the latter then either the disk is well and truly hosed or it's a controller/interface/driver issue.
If it's a full format then it's probably a bad sector somewhere along the disk in which case, dump it (if it's run out of sectors to reallocate and can't even format, it's just going to die and take whatever you put on there with it!).
If you really want to find out what's wrong with it; http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
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Terbert your approach should work.
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Terbert your approach should work.
It's been a while since I ran Windows, granted.. but surely a 'chkdsk' on a partially formatted drive (if it's even given a drive letter) is just going to tell you that ... it's a partially formatted drive?
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Thanks for responses guys.....on the case now. :y
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Terbert your approach should work.
It's been a while since I ran Windows, granted.. but surely a 'chkdsk' on a partially formatted drive (if it's even given a drive letter) is just going to tell you that ... it's a partially formatted drive?
You are right. Chkdsk looks for logical problems with the filesystem. We know the file system has had it because it couldn't successfully format it.
I would look for a tool that can show the SMART status of the drive, although I'm not familiar with anything on windows that does that (I'd boot from a Linux live cd to diagnose). I suspect it will have remapped all the bad blocks it can internally, and has started to become unreliable in a big way. If that's the case it's not worth risking your data on it.
Kevin
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I'd recommend a tool called Victoria (I think), its a fantastic, DOS based, HDD checker. If that scans OK, do a full surface test with Ranish partition manager.
The MS tools are kinda OK, but don't always sort everything.
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Format it to 90% as a slave drive the try and format the last 10% as another partition, it may well show up a bad sector faster that way.
If it shows a single bad sector the personaly I would not store data on it, but would be happy to use it as the internet cache and tempory files drive etc.
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Format it to 90% as a slave drive the try and format the last 10% as another partition, it may well show up a bad sector faster that way.
If it shows a single bad sector the personaly I would not store data on it, but would be happy to use it as the internet cache and tempory files drive etc.
If any intelligent drive (ie, IDE, PATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS etc) shows a bad sector, its buggered. Toast. Has-been. Shagged. Knackered.
Intelligent drives remap bad sectors to some 'secret' areas on the disk automatically (and will report via SMART if its above a threshold - this is one of the parameters used in prefailure warnings to replace disks, if your system has that functionality). So if the OS sees a bad sector, thats a sure sign the disk has run out of secret areas to remap to, which is a sure sign that something bad has happened (usually a head crash causing debris in the drive).
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And given the ridulously low price of drives, and the fact newer ones will perform better, if you do have a drive that is showing bad sectors, why mess around with it ;)
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And given the ridulously low price of drives, and the fact newer ones will perform better, if you do have a drive that is showing bad sectors, why mess around with it ;)
This I agree with, however before chucking it, it was worth the question......and really informative responses. Whilst the drive is/may be knackered, my knowledge has increased immensly :y
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Reminds me, I seem to be collecting a few 1Tb disks here... ...its lke they're breeding ;D
Still, I guess its spares for when OOF munches its disks...
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Reminds me, I seem to be collecting a few 1Tb disks here... ...its lke they're breeding ;D
Still, I guess its spares for when OOF munches its disks...
I have a whole spare NAS now after I got fed up with the fans in my homebrew unRAID box and bought a Qnap - 8x2TB disks in that one. That'll last at least a month ;D
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Reminds me, I seem to be collecting a few 1Tb disks here... ...its lke they're breeding ;D
Still, I guess its spares for when OOF munches its disks...
I have a whole spare NAS now after I got fed up with the fans in my homebrew unRAID box and bought a Qnap - 8x2TB disks in that one. That'll last at least a month ;D
I'm trying to reduce my leccy bill, so not after a NAS - though it would be a good use of those spare disks ;D
I did look into one of the toy ReadyNAS's, but performance wasn't up to it. Start going to the big boys to get the performance - NetApps et el - and it seems power usage rockets. As does price
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Though I do have a spare netapps filer sat under my desk, doubt netapps have remembered the loan ::)
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I did look into one of the toy ReadyNAS's, but performance wasn't up to it. Start going to the big boys to get the performance - NetApps et el - and it seems power usage rockets. As does price
The performance of the Qnap is pretty good - granted it'll never keep up with a true big-corporate grade NetApp filled with 15k SCSI drives.. but then it's a lot cheaper :) ~400Mbit read speed is quite good enough for me, though (considering it's all just streaming media!).
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I did look into one of the toy ReadyNAS's, but performance wasn't up to it. Start going to the big boys to get the performance - NetApps et el - and it seems power usage rockets. As does price
The performance of the Qnap is pretty good - granted it'll never keep up with a true big-corporate grade NetApp filled with 15k SCSI drives.. but then it's a lot cheaper :) ~400Mbit read speed is quite good enough for me, though (considering it's all just streaming media!).
Problem I had when playing with a toy NAS was the specs look OK, and probably could (just) meet them reading large, unfragmented files.
Because of the number of VMs I run, disk access is much more difficult. Our old P400 in the Proliant that runs this place (and loads of other stuff ;D) outperformed the toy Netgear NAS connected via gigabit
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Hmm.. that must be some P400! SCSI disks, I presume, rather than IDE ;)
The ~400Mbit was real world btw - I pulled a 9Gb file off the NAS over Gb copper to an SSD sitting in a little Atom powered box. Not that the box has seen a 'lot' of random read/write operations to fragment stuff badly, but it sees enough that I doubt the files are continuous (in fact they never could be considering they'll all be striped across 8 drives ;))
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You might find this a useful tool to keep nearby.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Runs from the CD.
eddie
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Hmm.. that must be some P400! SCSI disks, I presume, rather than IDE ;)
The ~400Mbit was real world btw - I pulled a 9Gb file off the NAS over Gb copper to an SSD sitting in a little Atom powered box. Not that the box has seen a 'lot' of random read/write operations to fragment stuff badly, but it sees enough that I doubt the files are continuous (in fact they never could be considering they'll all be striped across 8 drives ;))
SATA (II with NCQ enabled). Big files are easy. Average filesize of oof file is 1-2k, and one folder has 180,000 of these files in, and around 70,000 sub 1k files in another folder. And with 40+ simultaneous OOF users accessing said files....
...and thats just one VM amogst 15(ish ?) VMs all making demands of that single mirror pair...
...yup, the P400 does a brilliant job, allowing us to run a busy site, far from optimised for its size (we are one of the biggest YaBB sites in the world, and the second biggest I know of), on such modest physical (and even more modest virtual) hardware ;)
The NAS test was unsuccessful :'(
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I don't know what filesystem it's sitting on, but that many tiny files in one directory has to be pushing it to it's limits! Would almost certainly kill the performance of any RAID5+ set, though, you're right.
What ever was wrong with just stuffing everything into a nice big SQL database eh? ;) (I'd never looked at YaBB, the forums I've been involved with were all either phpBB or homebrew SQL based - I assumed they'd all be like that since it seems.. well, more sensible)
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I don't know what filesystem it's sitting on, but that many tiny files in one directory has to be pushing it to it's limits! Would almost certainly kill the performance of any RAID5+ set, though, you're right.
What ever was wrong with just stuffing everything into a nice big SQL database eh? ;) (I'd never looked at YaBB, the forums I've been involved with were all either phpBB or homebrew SQL based - I assumed they'd all be like that since it seems.. well, more sensible)
YaBB? Database? Thats two words you never here in the same sentence ;D. And given our size/traffic, the YaBB developers were mostly right about the scalability.
I'd be the first to say that when we started, I was shocked that YaBB was chosen. But chosen it was, so we made do as best we could (and got kicked off our first host within 3 weeks IIRC ;D ;D
Currently sits on a (admittedly tweaked) ext3
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The lack of a database does have some really big advantages though. Thats not to say I wouldn't like to see it on a SQL backend though ;)
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SQL usage would have many other advantages on the other hand imo.. as an admin you would need to back up only 2 files.. search and indexing mechanisms will be better.. however it would be necessary to rewrite all code behind which will require serious project time.. :-/
but must admit writing a site like this one without a database is another serious task which requires tremendous work..
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I only asked why my disk would not format :o :o :o :o :o ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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I only asked why my disk would not format :o :o :o :o :o ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
;D ;D ;D ;D :y
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I only asked why my disk would not format :o :o :o :o :o ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
It's FUBAR.
Now back to the interesting discusion.......
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
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SQL usage would have many other advantages on the other hand imo.. as an admin you would need to back up only 2 files.. search and indexing mechanisms will be better.. however it would be necessary to rewrite all code behind which will require serious project time.. :-/
but must admit writing a site like this one without a database is another serious task which requires tremendous work..
But the base of this software is 10yrs old, when hosting accounts with MySQL were rarer ;)
Even now, low cost hosting accounts with database support tend to be flakey... ...and don't forget, running a MySQL server will make a big hit on system resources ;)
I'm not saying SQL is bad (far from it), I am saying the method we use is not as bad as DBAs would like us to think ;)
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now I take a glance on the source code..(as much as I can look).. phew.. many javascripts, divs, java functions, browser exceptions, color codes..big trouble, anyone who wants to convert it (including the programmers who wrote that) better write it from scratch (in case sql is on the plans) .. will take some months.. :-/
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now I take a glance on the source code..(as much as I can look).. phew.. many javascripts, divs, java functions, browser exceptions, color codes..big trouble, anyone who wants to convert it (including the programmers who wrote that) better write it from scratch (in case sql is on the plans) .. will take some months.. :-/
Ssshhh, we have a MySQL version running on another server ::) ;) :-X