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The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

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Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#131

Post by fignews »

adrian_b wrote: post #129
buro9 wrote: post #77

I received a HDD only last year where the SMART status immediately reported a failure for status 22, and it led me to https://www.backblaze.com/blog/smart-22-is-a-gas-gas-gas/ It's an immediate "return the drive" scenario, as something happened between factory and the SMART test and the drive is no longer within spec. Thankfully an easy returns and replacement process, but an eye opener too, I hadn't heard of SMART 2…

SMART-supporting HDDs can execute several kinds of self-tests, e.g. long test, short test or conveyance test. On Linux these can executed with "smartctl", which can also be used to read the error logs after the tests finish. The long test can take almost a day on big HDDs, while the other tests take only a few minutes. After I had some problems with a bad HDD, I have begun to always execute all the SMART tests whenev…

How do you generally know when the long test is over? Is there a way to get a notification of completion? Is it ok to begin using the drives while testing? I personally run my new drives through a few rounds of badblocks

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#132

Post by adrian_b »

fignews wrote: post #131
adrian_b wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMART-supporting HDDs can execute several kinds of self-tests, e.g. long test, short test or conveyance test. On Linux these can executed with "smartctl", which can also be used to read the error logs after the tests finish. The long test can take almost a day on big HDDs, while the other tests take only a few minutes. After I had some problems with a bad HDD, I have begun to always execute all the SMART tests whenev…

How do you generally know when the long test is over? Is there a way to get a notification of completion? Is it ok to begin using the drives while testing? I personally run my new drives through a few rounds of badblocks

You start a long test with something like:

  smartctl --smart=on --device=sat /dev/***
  smartctl --test=long --device=sat /dev/***
(--device=sat is for the normal SATA or USB devices of Linux, such as "/dev/sda", which use SCSI commands; --device=nvme would be for NVME SSDs; other cases are described in the man page)

Then you can read from time to time the test log:

  smartctl --log=xselftest --device=sat /dev/***
When the test has finished, a line announcing that will appear in the log, saying that the test has passed or failed. If there are errors, they will appear in the log while the test progresses.

In theory you can make a script that runs periodically smartctl, e.g. once every 5 minutes, and which parses the smartctl output and signals the end of a test.

However, because I run such tests only seldom, when buying a new disk, I did not write such a script.

You can use the HDD during the test, unless the test had been started with:

  smartctl --captive --test=long --device=sat /dev/***
In the case of a "captive" test, attempting to use the drive for another purpose will abort the test.

While you can use the drive during a test, that will increase the duration of the test.

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#133

Post by networked »

fignews wrote: post #131
adrian_b wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMART-supporting HDDs can execute several kinds of self-tests, e.g. long test, short test or conveyance test. On Linux these can executed with "smartctl", which can also be used to read the error logs after the tests finish. The long test can take almost a day on big HDDs, while the other tests take only a few minutes. After I had some problems with a bad HDD, I have begun to always execute all the SMART tests whenev…

How do you generally know when the long test is over? Is there a way to get a notification of completion? Is it ok to begin using the drives while testing? I personally run my new drives through a few rounds of badblocks

You can use GSmartControl to run SMART self-tests and track their progress. It shows a progress bar for the current test.

Screenshot: https://gsmartcontrol.shaduri.dev/screenshots#a-test-in-prog....

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#134

Post by kalleboo »

aaron695 wrote: post #44

If anyone has a helium drive you can check it's levels - S.M.A.R.T. ID 22 If you are bored I'd be interested to hear what level it's at on old drives. Like is it still 100% after a year? [edit] I assume the 100/64h means 100% maybe not [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/windows8/comments/11ndk0o/what_is_c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis_and_... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/wl…

I have 12 Toshiba drives with ages ranging between 10k-27k hours, and their Helium levels are all at 100

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#135

Post by adrian_b »

networked wrote: post #133
fignews wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you generally know when the long test is over? Is there a way to get a notification of completion? Is it ok to begin using the drives while testing? I personally run my new drives through a few rounds of badblocks

You can use GSmartControl to run SMART self-tests and track their progress. It shows a progress bar for the current test. Screenshot: https://gsmartcontrol.shaduri.dev/screenshots#a-test-in-prog... .

That just displays in a nicer form the same logs that can be read with smartctl.

The progress displayed is somewhat illusory, because the estimated time until finish that is provided by the HDDs is unreliable. It is frequently wrong for the long test by even 20% to 50%, which means a difference of several hours.

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#136

Post by esd_g0d »

numeri wrote: post #114
esd_g0d wrote: post #61

I wanna be this guy when I grow up. Seriously, how realistic is it to get a job like this guy's? Open ended, no rules, just solving problems... Most days I'm fine with a boring specialized engineering career, but this one got to me...

Any career in fundamental research is more or less like that. From what I've seen personally, academics and government labs are the two biggest places you can find the most open ended roles. Each comes with their own caveats, of course.

interesting to know. in my limited experience though, in practice, in academia the politics is so heavy (more than in your average workplace) that political matters often overshadow research matters. maybe that is one of the caveats you had in mind. i am curious about government labs though. though it seems country-dependent. how is it different from academia?

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#137

Post by [deleted] »

robocat wrote: post #89
Out_of_Characte wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming a drive contains helium at standard temparature and pressure, and contains about a liter in volume. That would be about 1 gram worth of helium per drive.

0.05 gram Helium assuming: (1) half of drive volume is used for platters, (2) at 15° Celcius (3) at 1 atmosphere (I'm guessing not pressurised since that would defeat purpose of using Helium, although might be less than 1 atmosphere).. 0.376 litres for total 3.5-inch HDD volume from my first Google result: "Width: 101.6 mm, Height: 25.4 mm, Length: 146 mm". Actual volume used for platters is less than that. Helium is…

[deleted]

Re: The Race to Seal Helium HDDs (2021)

#138

Post by fignews »

adrian_b wrote: post #132
fignews wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you generally know when the long test is over? Is there a way to get a notification of completion? Is it ok to begin using the drives while testing? I personally run my new drives through a few rounds of badblocks

You start a long test with something like: smartctl --smart=on --device=sat /dev/*** smartctl --test=long --device=sat /dev/*** (--device=sat is for the normal SATA or USB devices of Linux, such as "/dev/sda", which use SCSI commands; --device=nvme would be for NVME SSDs; other cases are described in the man page) Then you can read from time to time the test log: smartctl --log=xselftest --device=sat /dev/*** When th…

Thank you
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