[OT] HD stress test

["Tony Butler" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Though is it [OT] really  since drives are crucial to PC's which seem
crucial to HA ;)

I have a highpoint RIAD controller in my main PC and it has lately been
complaining.
There are 6 drives connected to it in three sets of mirrors.
First, a lot of beeping - I have been having this on and off over the past
week or so.  Didn't know if it was the RAID or the mobo.
A reboot always cures it.
Rebooted on Sat. and one drive in a mirrored pair "disappeared" -
not
attached apparently.
Another reboot later and the drive reappeared, but one of the other
mirrored
pairs is broken and needs rebuilding (though none of the drives are saying
they are faulty) :/

Now aside from the fact that I don't know which drive(s) are dead (if it's
not the RAID controller being silly), I have heard enough horror stories
around here of people attempting to replace 1 drive in a mirror set and it
al going horribly wrong....
So I plugged in a spare drive to an onboard port and have backed up this
broken mirror.

Now I want to rebuild the array, but I think I should really stress test
the
drives (All of them infact) to see if I can discover if any of them are a
bit knackered.  Does anyone know of something I can run to give them a real
workout?

Ironically enough, I had been thinking lately that maybe I would stop using
RAID altogether because of said horror stories and just do proper
backups...and now this!
Having said that, does anyone have any experience of the Intel Active
Matrix
technology?  I am buying a little shuttle box with this technology in it
and
it does sound attractive - raid 0 AND raid 1 on the same pair of
drives....otoh see reference to horror stories again :(

TIA,

Tony