Re: [9fans] ata drive capabilities

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> Thanks for your replies!
> 
> The reason I asked is that I am thinking about a couple of methods
> to detect failures of my two mirrored disks (by fs) automatically.
> How do you check if your disks are still ok? I know I could invest
> in a real raid controller and rely on that but I still like the
> idea of being independent of yet another piece of hardware which
> internal formatting of the disk is hidden from me..
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Christian

i'm not sure you need that.  fs(3) already logs i/o errors which should
be as good an indication of trouble as smart.  i/o errors have the benefit
of not being drive dependent.  the recovery will need to be done by
hand anway, as fs doesn't have the concept of device state.  (there are
some subtile difficulties, too.  sometimes drives read an lba correctly
but writes fail.)

for something more automatic, devices would need state and an 
online recovery mechanism.

- erik