UDMA Cards and HD CRC Checks

[Greg Lindahl]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 04:15:44PM +0200, Stephen Johnston wrote:

> I need to select a multi-port (8) UDMA UltraATA board for a set of
> disks attached to each node of a Beowulf, and then write something
> to get the CRC periodically to check integrity (we will not be using
> RAID for various reasons) amoung other checks.  I have been looking
> at 'hdparm'.

I don't know what "getting the CRC" means. There is a protocol called
SMART you can use to query IDE drives to find out all kinds of
values. See:

http://www.linux-ide.org/smart.html

It's a function of the drives, not the controller. But I would suspect
that the 3ware controller does not deliver that information; it's
doing raid on the controller, and doesn't let you directly talk to the
drives.

I know that the various Promise Ultra cards support 2 channels and 4
disks, does anyone know of a card, other than 3ware, that handles
more?

-- greg

p.s. here's what the utils return for my laptop hard drive. Your guess
as to what they mean is as good as mine.

[root at wumpus lindahl]# ./ide-smart.proc /dev/hda

Id=  1, Status=13 {PreFailture , OffLine}, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=  4, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=  5, Status=51 {PreFailture , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 10, Passed
Id=  7, Status=11 {PreFailture , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=  9, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value= 99, Threshold= 60, Passed
Id= 10, Status=19 {PreFailture , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=196, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold=  1, Passed
Id=197, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold=  1, Passed
Id=198, Status=16 {Advisory    , OffLine}, Value=100, Threshold=  1, Passed
Id=199, Status=10 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=200, Threshold=  0, Passed
Id=221, Status=10 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=223, Status=18 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=225, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value= 83, Threshold= 50, Passed
Id=250, Status=10 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 50, Passed
OffLineStatus=0 {NeverStarted}, AutoOffLine=No, OffLineTimeout=9 minutes
OffLineCapability=27 {Immediate Auto SuspendOnCmd}
SmartRevision=16, CheckSum=69, SmartCapability=3 {SaveOnStandBy AutoSave}