STB Suite

April 2009

ATA/SATA Confidence Test in STB Suite 8.1
SATA ConfidenceNew to version 8.1 the STB Suite will now offer a ATA/SATA Drive Confidence Test from withing the STB Core GUI. To make sure you’ll receive the 8.1 upgrade in June, please make sure your Performa coverage is active.

This new test is part of the STB Suite, version 8.1.

ATA/SATA Drive Confidence Test

It tests all aspects of SATA drives, including write, read, data integrity, spin up/ spin down, and the state of the drives SMART data and logs. The progress and results of each test step is reported and may be written to a log file.

As each test step is begun its description will be colored blue. If the test results in an error the description will be marked red. If the test step is successful it will be marked green.

The test has several options:

  • Destructive – with this option checked the test will run write data integrity tests on the beginning, middle, and end sections of the drive.
  • Self-Test – you may choose to run either a SHORT, EXTENDED, CONVEYANCE, or SELECTIVE SMART self-test. The test displays how long each type of self-test will take to complete.

Read the full article here

 

 

 

ATA Quick Confidence (QC) Test 1
SATA Quick Confidence Test 1Another new 8.1 feature of the STB Suite is a new ATA/SATA Drive Quick Confidence Test 1.

This new test is part of the STB Suite, version 8.1.

ATA Quick Confidence Test 1

This test will provide a quick overview of the state of your SATA drive. This test will run in just a few minutes.

The test will check the drives SMART data to see if any SMART parameter has exceeded its corresponding threshold. It will also retrieve all of the drives SMART Self-Test logs and check if any self-test has ever failed. It will also read and optionally write 100MB data blocks at the beginning, middle, and end of the drive. Then the test will execute 10,000 random seek operations.

The progress and results of each test step is reported and may be written to a log file.

As each test step is begun its description will be colored blue. If the test results in an error the description will be marked red.If the test step is successful it will be marked green.

Read the full article here

 

 

 

Customized training with an STB technician

STB TrainingDo you have questions about how to best use the STB Suite in your business? STB is happy to work with you in an interactive “live” environment to help you get the most out of your Toolbox. The cost? If you are a current Performa customer it is free! The commitment? Training sessions run between 30 and 60 minutes.

Here is a list of some recent customer training sessions that STB has conducted – live, interactive web sessions presented by STB programmers:

  1. Three stages of disk drive screening
  2. How to troubleshoot tape drive problems
  3. RAID issues in disk drive testing
  4. Multi-drive SATA firmware downloading with the STB Suite

Contact Jeremy Wolfe at (720) 249-2641 today to schedule your own custom training session!

 

 

 

Ask Dr. SCSI – “Can you give me an example of calling an external program with DMM?”

The real Dr. SCSIThis article will describe a sample C++ (Visual Studio 6) project which uses calls to the Developers Toolbox (DTB) to issue a SATA SMART Self-Test command to drives. The program is designed to be called from the DMM External Program test step. If you missed the “Launch an External Program in DMM” article in the March newsletter you can read it here.

DMM will pass the address of each drive under test to this program via command-line parameters. The program parses the command line, extracts the host adapter, target, and LUN of the drive, issues an ATA command to the drive, waits for the self-test to complete, then sends back a text message which DMM will enter into that drives log file.

This project is meant to be used as a template, and illustrates:

  • how to parse the command line parameters to extract the drive address
  • how to issue a command to DTB
  • how to send information back to DMM to be logged

The project/program is called “DMMSataSelfTest” and can be downloaded using this link –http://scsitoolbox.com/ScryptCrypt/files/DMM/DMMSataSelfTest-90410.zip

Read the full PDF article online here

 

 

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