Topic: My server is a ticking time bomb

[Jake Howlett]

Hi all,

This may sound strange but my SME server (5.6 on an IBM xSeries 200) has started to make ticking noises.

They happen *every* five seconds exactly and the noise, to me, is that of a quick access being made to one of the hard drives.

I'm sure it's normal for some services to make disc access in such a way but the noise worries me. Twelve times a minute is 17,280 times a day. What is the long term impact on the HDD? Is it destined to fail as a result of repeated activity.

Cheers,
Jake Howlett

[SloopJohnB]

I am in a similar boat. My hard-drive light stays on constantly and the harddrive "feels" like it is always spinning. Is this by design, and should we be worried about the moving parts going south on us?

SloopJohnB

[Brad D.]

You should check out the manufactures website for a stress test utility.

I know IBM/Hitache use "DFT- Drive Fitness Test" as their free download.  It is a bootable floppy that will non-destructivly test an IDE drive.

It worked _very_ well for me. I have even used it on non-ibm/hitiache dirves.

Get it here: http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Good Luck!

[Jake Howlett]

Thanks Brad. Will download the program out of interest. Not sure how it helps me though.

All I really want to know is if I should put up with it or try and stop it, and if persistent, repeated access is a bad thing....

Jake

[DS]

That is because of the commit interval of the journaling file system. I do not think it is a bad thing that will destroy the HDD. I run SME on a very old HDD which does a lot of noise in my bedroom. I got used to it for some months now. Considering the HDD is at least 5 years old and had no bad sectors, then I can say it does not affect it. After all, HDDs are made to run countinuously. If you think it is too much and you do not have essential data on your HDD you should be able to set the commit interval to a slower pace. Dunno how to do it, never tried it myself.

[RayG]

Do you have snort and acid loaded ? If so, check acid to see what snort is trapping. Everything that trips snort gets logged to the hard drive. The "Windows Cyberkit 2.2" reports were keeping my hard drive access light on pretty much solid.