DiskExercizer

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DiskExercizer

Motivation

The DiskExercizer program is used to exercise a new disk, stressing the weak regions of the medium so that bad blocks collapse and get entered into the Bad Block Table of the device. It should be used before installing valuable information onto the disk. This program runs on formatted disks, and it can be used to exercise the disk at any point in the life of the disk.

Most modern disk drives manage their own lists of bad blocks internally. As the drive writes data to the medium, it checks for errors. When a block misbehaves enough, it is added to the Bad Block Table, and it is not used again for data storage.

A new disk will have obvious bad blocks, which the manufacturer will catch in its initial ``burn-in.'' However, there are also weak blocks which will fail eventually, but maybe not before you install an Operating System or a database over them and use it a while.

Hammering away at a new disk with DiskExercizer will catch the bad blocks that have surfaced in shipping and sitting on the shelf, and it will uncover the weak ones before valuable data is put on them.

Procedure

The DiskExercizer program starts at a heirarchical directory structure and fills up the disk with files of a given pattern, reading back each file and verifying the pattern. The program keeps creating files until the disk partition is full. Then, it deletes all of these files.

By default, the program fills the disk four times in sequence, using the successive byte-patterns:

   0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, and 0.

The disk is filled with bytes all of one type; then it is emptied and filled with bytes of the next type. The first two patterns are alternate ones and zeroes: 1010 and 0101. The next pattern is all-bits-ON. The last pattern zeroes the disk. These four fillings constitute a single pass. The user may request performing a number of these passes.

You may specify your own pattern to use, instead of the standard four. Alternately, you may specify filling the disk with random data.

A list of directories may be entered. Each directory requested is exercised in its own subthread, so that I/O is processed in parallel on multiple disks. The processing can be interupted with Ctl-C, and the statistics so far will be printed; this can be used to estimate how (awfully) long the complete processing will take.

Syntax

This is a command-line utility.

Usage: DiskExercizer [options] directory1 [directory2] ...

Filling Options:
             -n <number>  number of passes to make over the disk (default=1)
             -s <NMBytes> file unit size (MB) <default=100>

  --pattern | -p <pattern> alternate pattern-string with which to fill the disk
  --fill-randomly | -r -> fill the disk with random data
                         (default is a pass each of 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, and 0)

Information Options:
  --help          | -h -> output this help message
  --keep-files    | -k -> quit after filling the disk, without deleting
  --version       | -V -> version of the program.

  --outfile       | -o <pathname>  output-file for statistics

Purchase

Price: $ 50

Download Packages

After you have purchased your License, you may go to the Download Page to copy the program package down to your computer. You must run the program package to extract the program and to activate it, using your License Number and Activation Code.

Proceed to the Download Page.

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